The NYC subway just had its busiest day since before the pandemic

If your train felt particularly crowded last Wednesday, you had plenty of company. The New York City subway recorded 4,696,692 rides on September 23, its busiest day since before the pandemic and a new record for the years since. (And somewhere in those nearly 4.7 million trips, at least one person insisted there was room to move down.) 

The figure tops the milestones the MTA was celebrating last October, when the subway carried 4.52 million riders on October 22 and 4.55 million the following day. Back then, the agency was also marking its three billionth tap on its contactless fare system. Eleven months later, New Yorkers have given it another number to put on a graphic.

Governor Kathy Hochul shared the latest milestone on social media, crediting investments in safety and reliability. The MTA has likewise pointed to those improvements as ridership has climbed. The count measures rides, though, not 4.7 million individual people; a New Yorker who takes the subway to work and home again counts as two separate trips.

It’s a drastic sign of how far the system has come since the early pandemic, when its usual rush-hour crowds vanished. There’s another bit of perspective for anyone tempted to declare an all-time subway record: the system logged 5,985,311 rides on October 24, 2013, more than 1.2 million above Wednesday’s total. The September milestone marks the busiest day of the post-pandemic period, but not the busiest day in subway history.

As for why exactly last Wednesday was the day that prompted such record-breaking figures, there are likely a few explanations. For one, the United National General Assembly took over midtown from September 21 through 26, bringing leagues of high-profile visitors to our streets and therefore us plebeians down underground as we tried to avoid endless road closures. There's also the back-to-school surge, as well as the general seasonal return of people coming back to the city after a long summer away. 

Still, nearly 4.7 million rides in 24 hours is an enormous amount of city life in motion: commutes, school runs and dinner plans. The next time a crowded train arrives, you can take comfort in knowing you’re part of a record-setting comeback.