NYC’s Uneven Subway Station Recovery
This chart ranks the ten highest- and ten lowest-recovery NYC subway station complexes by comparing paid entries in the latest twelve complete months with calendar 2019. It shows how sharply the city’s recovery differs from station to station—not office attendance or the separate effects of service, tourism, construction, and remote work.
What does it show?
Some subway stations now exceed their 2019 traffic, but the median comparable complex is only at 75% and the weakest are near half their former level.
Methodology
Sums the MTA ridership field for every subway station complex during the latest twelve complete calendar months and divides it by the same complex's calendar-2019 total. Both periods contain a full seasonal cycle. The ranking requires a matching MTA station-complex ID in both official hourly datasets and at least 750,000 paid entries in 2019; extreme ratios outside 20%–180% are excluded as likely definition or service discontinuities. The chart shows the ten highest and ten lowest recovery ratios among the comparable complexes, not the largest stations. Ridership includes estimated MetroCard and OMNY paid entries, not unique riders or completed trips. Results can reflect service changes, station construction, tourism, neighborhood activity, fare evasion, and remote work; the chart does not identify their separate effects.