Subway ridership surges, Brooklyn number one in weekday ridership

Subway ridership throughout the five boroughs has increased 2.6 percent to 1.8 billion customers in 2014, the highest annual ridership in more than 65 years, according to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA).

According to the numbers, some 5.6 million customers rode the subway on an average weekday and six million customers on an average weekend.

“The renaissance of the New York City subway is a miracle for those who remember the decrepit system of the 1970s and the 1980s, but moving more than six million customers a day means even minor disruptions now can create major delays,” said MTA Chairperson and CEO Thomas Prendergast. “We are aggressively working to combat delays and improve maintenance, but the ultimate solution requires investing in infrastructure upgrades such as Communications-Based Train Control signaling systems to accommodate every one of our growing number of customers.”

At its busiest, the subway system carried more than six million customers on 29 weekdays in the last four months of 2014 – a level not seen since the post-World War II boom, according to Prendergast, and while the growth was seen across the board, growing neighborhoods like Brooklyn’s Bushwick saw the highest percentages of increase.

Brooklyn itself had the largest average weekday ridership increase (2.7 percent, or more than 31,000 riders per weekday).