Subway Ridership Report - Major Gains in Last Decade

Real Bay Ridge people take the subway at all hours of the day and night!

The Center for an Urban Future sent us a report the other day that shows that ridership broken down by subway station- very interesting for us geeks with an interest in mass transit.

Subway ridership is way up compared with a decade ago. I think that this is due to the Giuliani/Maple/Bratton leadership which essentially lowered crime rates beyond all recognition, and by improvements in the system from the bad old days.

Much of the increased ridership is in Brooklyn.

But let's look at some of the statistics in Bay Ridge and Sunset Park on the R line, showing average weekday ridership by station for 2008, and how this ridership compares with that of 1998:

• 95th Street, 5722 riders, up 23%
• 86th Street, 10,659 riders, up 57%
• 77th Street, 5326 riders, up 32%
• Bay Ridge Avenue, 8215 riders, up 34%
• 59th Street, 12,020 riders, up 67%
• 53rd Street, 7648 riders, up 39%
• 45th Street, 7303 riders, up 39%
• 36th Street, 11,151 riders, up 44%

People in Bay Ridge have voted with their feet, and they vote for more mass transit. We cannot let the service on the R, N, D or any other subway lines regress to the bad old Abe Beame days.

See the original press release, and a link to the interesting source material, below.

----

March 9, 2009 – The Center for an Urban Future, a nonpartisan think tank based in New York City, today published a study which reveals that Brooklyn was home to 51 of the 111 subway stations that experienced an increase in ridership of 50 percent or more between 1998 and 2008. The report also shows that bus ridership in Brooklyn increased by 21.9 percent between 1998 and 2008, dwarfing the 7.6 percent growth rate for Manhattan during the same period.

Overall, the Center’s study found that the largest gains in transit ridership over the past decade occurred at subway stations and on bus routes located in the boroughs outside of Manhattan. The Center’s analysis, which documents the percentage increase in weekday ridership for every subway station in the system between 1998 and 2008 as well as the growth in daily bus ridership by borough, highlights just how important the city’s public transportation system has become for residents living outside of Manhattan. And it comes at a time when the MTA is planning to make a series of devastating service cutbacks on bus and subway lines outside of Manhattan and as some outer-borough legislators are opposing new tolls on the bridges as a way to prevent the transit cuts.


The Center’s findings include:

· 20 of the 22 stations with the largest percentage increase in average weekday subway ridership between 1998 and 2008 were either in the outer boroughs or in Manhattan north of 96th Street.

· In 2008, 62 stations outside of Manhattan had an average weekday ridership of more than 10,000 people, up significantly from 46 stations in 2003 and 36 in 1998.

· More than a quarter of all New York City subway stations—111 out of 425—saw an increase in average weekday ridership of 50 percent or more between 1998 and 2008. Brooklyn accounted for nearly half (51) of those stations; there were 28 in Manhattan, 20 in the Bronx and 12 in Queens.

· 13 stations on the L line and nine on the N line were among the 50 fastest growing stations citywide. Other lines with several stations among the 50 fastest-growing stations in the system between 1998 and 2008 were: the 2 (seven stations), 3 (six stations), F (five stations), J (five stations) and M (five stations).

· Overall, 82 percent of the citywide gain in bus ridership between 1998 and 2008 occurred in the boroughs outside of Manhattan.

· While average daily bus ridership in Manhattan increased by just 7.6 percent during the past decade, bus ridership surged by 28.4 percent in Queens, 28.4 percent in Staten Island, 23.5 percent in the Bronx and 21.9 percent in Brooklyn. (Manhattan actually experienced a 6.7 percent decline in bus ridership between 2003 and 2008, the only borough to see a decrease during this period.)

The Center’s analysis, which is based on data from MTA New York City Transit, is the latest issue of New York by the Numbers, the Center for an Urban Future’s monthly economic snapshot of the five boroughs.

Last month, the Center published a major report about the challenges facing New York City’s middle class which argued that rising commuting times and overcrowded subways have already become a key quality of life issue for many residents living in the boroughs outside of Manhattan. This new data makes a strong case that these residents should be seeing an improvement in transit service rather than a dramatic cut—and it suggests that elected officials representing neighborhoods in Staten Island, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx would be well-served to pay as much or more attention to their transit-riding constituents as to the relative handful of car drivers into Manhattan.

The new study is available here