Second Ave. Sagas

Ridership Update: 2012 a record year for subways

Written by

Benjamin Kabak

in

,

As a brief follow-up to my early post on 2012 ridership figures, the MTA announced the final tally for subway usage, and it’s a doozy. Total subway ridership hit 1.654 billion last year, the highest it’s been in 62 years, and the average weekend ridership matched the all-time historic high, set back in 1946. Furthermore, these records come amidst an estimated 43.8 million rides lost to Superstorm Sandy.

“Our ridership growth has been strongest among discretionary riders and during off-peak times,” Thomas F. Prendergast, MTA Interim Executive Director, said in a statement. “Recent trends, like the younger ‘millennial’ generation increasingly gravitating toward transit around the country, are building on older trends, like the introduction of unlimited cards and free transfers between subways and buses, to continue the long-term ridership growth over 20 years.”

It’s unclear how weekday ridership compares to historical averages, but it’s at or near record highs as well. Considering how pervasive automobile usage has become in society today, it speaks volumes of transit’s place in New York’s economy and daily life that ridership has continued to climb over the past twenty years. It’s also something to ponder how the system seemed in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Moving forward requires a strong capital commitment, but it must happen.

Comments

32 responses to “Ridership Update: 2012 a record year for subways”

  1. Someone

    Too bad that it’s not the subway system with the highest ridership in the world anymore.

    Reply
    1. Benjamin Kabak

      Why is it too bad? It doesn’t really impact us at all.

      Reply
    2. Bolwerk

      I’m not even sure it ever was, at least not in the past 40 years.

      Reply
      1. Someone

        It was pretty high, before the 1960s-1970s.

        Reply
      2. Alon Levy

        Which city could top it? The London Underground is reportedly at its peak right now, so it couldn’t have more ridership than New York in the 1920s. Maybe the Paris Metro, I’m not sure, but New York was a much larger city than Paris the. Tokyo only had a handful of lines until the 1960s. My guess is that Tokyo overtook New York around 1965, or maybe in the 1950s if we count commuter rail, but I could be wrong.

        Reply
        1. Bolwerk

          Not sure if Paris or Moscow ever could. Herr Someone just seemed to be implying it was recently the most used system. I have no idea about prewar use compared to elsewhere.

          Lots of places probably lost ridership because of wartime damage and postwar economic hardship. Of course, NYC lost it in spite of not having those things.

          Reply
          1. Alon Levy

            Moscow was also a small system prewar, and even postwar it took a while to grow. Maybe it overtook New York a few years before being overtaken by Tokyo, I don’t know.

            Reply
    3. al

      Some of those “subway systems” with higher ridership are in large cities without much or any commuter rail. Some have overlap. Seoul Metro and Shanghai Metro are 2 examples of this. Tokyo is the exception, but then again Tokyo Metropolitan Area’s population is larger than NYC by more than 70%.

      Reply
      1. Alon Levy

        New York has very little off-peak commuter rail; weekday ridership on all three systems combined is about 800,000. There are individual lines in Tokyo with twice that ridership. Seoul actually has way more commuter rail – Bundang, Sin-Bundang, and other lines that aren’t formally part of the subway. If you add in commuter rail, Paris actually overtakes New York because of the RER, and London pulls even or close to it, while Beijing, Shanghai, and Seoul all stay above New York.

        Reply
  2. Marc Shepherd

    Moving forward requires a strong capital commitment, but it must happen.

    How do you define “must,” given the high probability that it won’t, in fact, occur?

    Reply
    1. SEAN

      At some point even the most pig headded politition will realize just how important the transit system is to NYC. But sorry to say, we’re not there yet as many of them have wet dreams of defunding transit nationwide despite the increasing demand for it.

      Reply
      1. Bolwerk

        I wouldn’t be so optimistic. If you want to know how obstinate people can be, look at the climate change debate. We spent 60 years defunding transit and squandering resources on ill-conceived suburban transport. We could quite easily spend as much time doing the reverse – when and if we decide to do the reverse.

        Reply
    2. Alon Levy

      “Must” in this context means that a significant increase in transit use requires new major projects, of which SAS is just the top priority.

      Reply
  3. lawhawk

    Sandy was a perfect reminder of just how much the NYC metro area relies on the subways for its economic vitality. Shutter a couple of key transit points, and you reduce the capability to get work done in the CBDs to a trickle.

    It also shows the importance of taking vulnerabilities into account for storms and storm prep, and the need to prudently invest in the infrastructure – both the visible stuff and the stuff that the public usually never sees (like electronic equipment, switches, gears, etc.)

    It means making sure that the rebuilt South Ferry terminal is done in a cost effective manner that wont get flooded the next time a Sandy-type event occurs. It means doing more to protect the other tunnels from flooding out as they did.

    Reply
    1. Bolwerk

      In personal conversations, I’m finding the response of many in transit advocacy circles to Sandy has been revolting, to say the least. Rather than carrying away your point, that we need to care for and invest in the subway, they conclude the opposite – that the subway is vulnerable, inflexible, and only so worth worrying about.

      The solution? Monrails!1!1! BRT!!11!!!1! bikes!11! srsly!1!

      Reply
      1. Benjamin Kabak

        I’d love to hear which transit advocates are saying that. The ones I know have taken the opposite approach and urging hardening and more investments.

        Reply
        1. Bolwerk

          I didn’t mean to imply big name advocates were doing this. I really meant “circles,” not (at least not major) advocates themselves. I’m going by personal conversations with a number of completely non-notable people at community boards, political/networking events, and the odd sustainability task force. Basically, places where transport issues come up. Maybe it’s low expectations? A casual awareness that costs are high, and no idea what to do about it?

          Not to imply it even has a political impact per se, though maybe it speaks to problems with advocates’ message? Anyway, maybe I’m off base, but it’s not unheard of here (although this wasn’t about Sandy). Running into that attitude several times in the past several months since Sandy does raise, if not an alarm, an eyebrow….

          Reply
      2. Someone

        Did you just press the shift key randomly while pressing the “1” key? That’s what it looks like.

        Reply
        1. Bolwerk

          Did you just materialize as a fully developed adult white male at the beginning of 2013, and consequently missed the past 20 years of the Internet, or are you on the autistic spectrum?

          Reply
          1. Someone

            Actually, I’m not that old. But OK.

            Next time, when you want to get more than 5 exclamation points across, please hold down the 1 and shift keys simultaneously. Thank you.

            Reply
            1. Jason

              For someone who is not that old, you clearly fail at the internet. Bolwerk intentionally did that. Many others do as well…its a combination of sarcasm and mockery of the mouthbreathers who tend to over-punctuate in message boards.

              Reply
              1. Someone

                I’m not that young either. I seem to be in the middle.

                Reply
                1. Someone

                  Also, I don’t care much about that phenomenon.

                  Reply
      3. Someone

        Anyway, the subway is not a top priority right now, believe it or not.

        Reply
  4. Michael Cairl

    And back in 1953 the Myrtle Avenue El and the 3rd Avenue El were still up and running!

    Reply
    1. Someone

      Those aren’t subway lines!

      Reply
      1. Marc Shepherd

        The term “New York City Subway” includes (and included back then) all of the rapid transit lines operated by NYCT, whether or not they were/are actually “sub-anything”.

        Reply
        1. Someone

          Elevated subway sections may have been derivative of els from olden days, but the els don’t exist anymore, largely thanks to the IND.

          Reply
          1. Walter

            The Third Avenue El had two junctions with the current White Plains Road Line, and was listed on the subway map as the 8 train. It may have used different rolling stock, but it was, for all purposes, considered a part of the unified Subway system.

            Reply
  5. John-2

    You can go all the way back to the 1920s, when the city refused to let the IRT and BMT raise their nickle fares despite the post-World War I inflation, to see where the cash-flow problems for the subways initiated. It started to hit home with the aging first-generation rolling stock by the 1950s, but didn’t really get going until the preventive maintenance budget cutting o the 1960s and 70s, which was then compounded by the graffiti epidemic.

    For now, there at least has been a realization that by maintaining the system’s reliability and safety, you’re rewarded with an increase in riders — mainly new ones who don’t remember the horror show of the 1970-90 period. But you really cant begin to think about adding on to the system any more than what’s in the pipeline until you get the people in charge of the purse strings to understand the need for additional investments due to the increase traffic, along with the caution not to find the money by taking it out of other things like the maintenance budget. No point in building Phase II, III or IV of the SAS if Albany isn’t going to fun keeping the rest of the system up and running, because the passengers will figure it out and start fleeing the system aagain, just as they did in the 1960s and 70s.

    Reply
  6. Larry Littlefield

    Another stunning bit of news that I thought would be accompanied by marching bands and fireworks, but was unnoticed.

    When the NYS Department of Labor released its rebenchmarked, annual average employment data for 2012, NYC’s private sector total FINALLY exceeded the level recorded in 1969. After 43 years.

    These are wage and salary workers, and this does not include the self employed. According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, this figure reached 1 million (!) in 2011, or about three times the 1969 level.

    We are in a different world than we were 30 years ago here in NYC, even though the US as a whole is in many ways poorer.

    Reply
  7. Patrick

    If NYCT was able to pull off an impressive increase in ridership numbers this year despite that week or two when they were running drastically less service, I’m really looking forward to what they can pull off in 2013 (hopefully without any hurricanes or other natural disasters!)

    ~Patrick @ The LIRR Today

    Reply

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