Subway Ridership on a Post-Omicron Rebound in New York City

Kevin Duggan reports on the resurgence of transit ridership in New York City: "More than 3 million people rode the New York City subway each day for three consecutive days last week, the first time the MTA recorded such high numbers since the outbreak of the Omicron variant of COVID-19 in December."

Duggan notes that the high number of riders is still far less than pre-pandemic levels in the Big Apple (55 percent of pre-pandemic levels to be exact) and still far below pre-Omicron levels (ridership had climbed to 74.3% of 2019 figures on November 21, 2021.

Pre-pandemic ridership totaled around 5.5 million a day. On December 9, 2021, the system had 3.44 million riders—a pandemic record.

The source article, linked below, also includes specific data for bus ridership and car traffic. On the latter, Duggan reports: "Car traffic rates compared to pre-pandemic quickly rebounded to almost 99% of pre-COVID levels at MTA’s seven bridges and two tunnels in the most recent days, and dipped below 70% only twice during Omicron, in both cases coinciding with snowstorms on Jan. 7 and Jan. 29."

Whether transit ridership will ever rebound to pre-pandemic levels (to be fair, transit ridership was already declining in most U.S. cities prior to the pandemic) is very much still in doubt.