Subway and bus ridership for 2023

In 2023, subway ridership posted a 14% annual increase to 1.15 billion annual paid rides, hitting the billion-ride milestone six weeks earlier than in 2022.

Ridership patterns have shifted since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, with discretionary travel becoming more popular than commutation travel. Increased telecommuting and more flexible work-from-home policies have made traditional five-day commuting less common. Commutation ridership is now highest on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. Overall subway ridership is now at 68% of 2019 levels. At 77%, weekend recovery is higher than the weekday recovery of 66%. Paid ridership has also benefited from a slightly lower fare evasion rate in 2023, as the MTA continues to combat subway fare evasion.

Bus ridership experienced a modest annual increase of 0.3% to 426 million rides, 63% of the 2019 level. This was slower than the 11% growth observed in 2022. Significant factors contributing to slower growth include rising bus fare evasion and the introduction of a fare-free pilot program on five bus routes starting in September 2023.

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 3.6 million and buses have a daily ridership of 1.4 million, representing 68% and 63%, respectively, of pre-pandemic ridership levels.

Our system includes:

• 472 subway stations
• 238 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 ​​​ station is combined with the 8 Av ​ station.

The station names and lines stopping at each station reflect service at the end of 2023.

In our spreadsheet, stations are listed alphabetically by borough, and the rankings are by 2023 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.