MTA Ridership Slowly Increasing, Stimulus Provided $14 billion

 After a year in which subway ridership dropped by 70%, New Yorkers are once again hopping in the subway.

    A year ago, on Wednesday, March 17, to protect New Yorkers from COVID, Mayor Bill de Blasio shut down the city’s schools and restaurants. As a result of the lockdowns and fears of virus transmission, the city’s use of public transportation plummeted to such an extent that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) found itself $44.8 billion, the MTA’s website said in September 2020.

   President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus, which he signed last week, however, will help the MTA to fight its way out of debt by provide the beleaguered agency with nearly $14 billion. 

   “It is so great to see more and more New Yorkers riding the subway again. To set back-to-back record highs in the same week is an indicator that people are eager to return to their normal lives,” Interim Transit President Sarah Feinberg said in a statement. “Our team will continue to keep the system as clean as it has ever been and as safe as it has ever been as New York City comes back.” 

   Although only just more than two million of the city’s 8.4 million residents have been vaccinated so far, the New York Post reported that subway ridership has been slowly increasing since the end of last summer, when the MTA reported ridership levels returning to 30 to 40% of what they had been pre-pandemic. 

   MTA consultants, however, have estimated that a return to ridership that is 100% of what is was before COVID will take years to return.

   In fact, because many New Yorkers might continue to work at home with greater frequency or get around town in ways other than subways and buses, ridership, consultants say, may remain between 80 and 92% of the levels the MTA saw pre-pandemic.