After taking a month off from committee meetings in February, the MTA board is back with a vengeance this month. The committees meet later this morning, and this month’s board books are chock full of information. Highlights include some capital projects timelines and an expansion of the “On The Go” kiosk project that I’ll cover later. One number though jumped out at me, and it’s a number that tells us how truly impactful the subways are.
Despite Superstorm Sandy shuttering the subway system for a few days, the MTA is reporting 5.379 million daily weekday subway riders for 2012. That figure represents a 1.8 percent increase over 2011 and is a near-record high. Weekend ridership is up even more with Saturday and Sunday averaging a combined total of 5.662 million riders for an increase over 2011 of three percent. Even local bus service ridership — which had been in free fall for a while — increased by almost one percent. All told, over 8.5 million riders use an MTA bus, subway or commute rail option each weekday.
It’s hard to overstate the importance of that figure. Each day, the equivalent of every resident in New York City takes a trip on some form of public transportation. Most people use the subways, but the bus ridership figures are strong as well. PATH, Metro-North and the LIRR account for over 800,000 combined daily trips. Imagine the city’s economy with no transit system; imagine the area’s congestion without public transportation.
One of the clear factors driving transit usage is employment. As the MTA’s board books have shown, transit ridership trends closely track employment — with some caveats. When employment is up, transit ridership is up as well. When employment is down, transit ridership has been too. “Subway ridership is correlated with employment levels,” the MTA said. “However, subway ridership has performed much better than employment with much faster growth in ridership than jobs, especially from 2003 to 2008.”
Chief among the drivers — especially during lean employment times — of transit ridership is the relative cost. Despite a steady stream of fare hikes over the last few years, it’s still much, much cheaper to use transit than it is to drive, and it likely always will be. Unemployed New Yorkers who have to get around will eschew costly car trips in favor of a subway ride, and thus, outside of truly calamitous economic times, ridership will generally always increase.
Yet, despite these astronomical numbers and despite the ever-increasing ridership figures, it’s a struggle to realize gains for transit riders. The five million New Yorkers who need the subway every day are, in one sense, an untapped political constituency often invisible in the eyes of those who represent us in City Hall and Albany. (That invisibility is, incidentally, what the Riders Alliance is trying to change.)
Maybe it’s because of the historical and social attitudes toward transit ridership that is viewed as not even second class. Maybe it’s because of the perceived and real inept experiences we’ve all had with the MTA. Maybe it’s a combination of both. But somehow, the millions of people who need the subway and the city and state economy that relies on these people can’t get no respect.
Despite a fare hike this year and another planned for 2015, ridership will continue to increase as the city’s population grows and as jobs continue to come back. Will anyone in Albany notice or will we just marvel at the ridership numbers while long-term investment in the system remains an ever-elusive goal?
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