Subway and bus ridership for 2022

In 2022, ridership on New York City Transit's subways and buses continued to increase from the low points recorded in 2020, the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.  

As pandemic restrictions were relaxed or lifted, businesses in New York City moved to new, hybrid ways of working. Subway ridership patterns emerged, with weekday usage highest on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. Weekend ridership increased to 67% of 2019 levels, up from the 53% recorded in 2021; it surpassed the weekday recovery, which was at 58% of 2019 levels.

There were also ridership milestones: On Thursday, December 8, more than 3.9 million rides were  reported, the highest number at that point since before the pandemic. On Saturday, December 10, a weekend high of 2.67 million riders was achieved. And for the first time since the start of the pandemic, annual subway ridership topped 1 billion — a 33% increase over 2021. 

Bus annual ridership increased 11% over the year to 426 million, which was 63% of 2019 ridership. NYCT leadership continued its redesign of bus routes to ensure optimal service across the system.

We operate the largest public transportation agency in North America and one of the largest in the world.

The subway has a daily ridership of approximately 3.2 million and bus has a daily ridership of 1.4 million, representing 58% and 63%, respectively, of pre-pandemic ridership levels.

Our system includes:

• 472 subway stations
• 236 local bus routes
• 20 Select Bus Service routes
• 75 express routes

We have 472 stations, the largest number of public transit subway stations of any system in the world. Note that our table lists 424 stations. We combined ridership data for station complexes, where stations are connected by transfer passageways. (We can't accurately allocate ridership to each station in a complex.) For example, the 14 St A, C, E station is combined with the 8 Av L station.

The station names and lines stopping at each station reflect service at the end of 2022.

In our spreadsheet, stations are listed alphabetically by borough, and the rankings are by 2022 ridership. The “systemwide adjustment” accounts for miscellaneous ridership and other adjustments that are not allocated by station.

In our tables, stations that were temporarily closed (either fully or partially) are denoted with asterisks; go to the “Closures” tab for the closure dates. For these stations, zero ridership was included in the averages for any days when the station was closed, except for the days when the entire subway was closed or fare-free.

Local routes begin with one or two letters corresponding to the major borough of operation (B=Brooklyn, Bx=Bronx, M=Manhattan, Q=Queens, S=Staten Island). New York City Transit express routes begin with the letter “X”, except for “SIM” used for express routes established under the Staten Island Express Bus Network Redesign.

MTA Bus express routes begin with “BM” for Brooklyn to Manhattan routes, “BxM” for Bronx to Manhattan routes, and “QM” for Queens to Manhattan routes. In the ridership averages, zero was included for any day during the year on which a given route did not operate, except for the days when the entire bus system was closed or fare-free. In the following tables, certain routes that effectively operate as a single route are combined.

Download our data for New York City Transit and MTA Bus Company.