The MTA celebrated its busiest Sunday ever, and riders celebrated regaining feeling in their left arms by Wednesday.
MANHATTAN, United States (Spintaxi) – The New York City subway carried 3.14 million riders on Marathon Sunday, the most it has ever moved on a Sunday, and transit officials say the milestone belongs to every New Yorker who stood inside a packed Q train with a stranger’s tote bag resting on their face and silently agreed never to speak of it.
The number, released by the governor’s office in its ridership announcement, beat last year’s Sunday mark of 2.81 million by 11 percent and landed at 109 percent of pre-pandemic Sunday levels. Governor Kathy Hochul said that “from the streets to the subways, New Yorkers were on the move this weekend in record numbers,” which riders confirmed, adding that they were also on each other.
A Full Week of Subway Records, Broken One Elbow at a Time
The Sunday total was only the headline. According to 6sqft’s rundown of the record-setting stretch, the system carried 4.72 million riders on Thursday, the highest single day since the pandemic, then 4.51 million on Friday and 3.59 million on Halloween Saturday, the busiest Saturday since 2016. The three-day weekend total of 11.24 million and the seven-day total of 29.35 million were also records.
MTA Chair and CEO Janno Lieber summed up the weekend by saying spirits were high for Halloween and the marathon, “but subway ridership was even higher.” Lieber has also observed that “when New York goes big, it goes by mass transit,” a sentence riders say is accurate, though it leaves out the part where New York also goes sideways, then backwards, then gets shoved out at Union Square by a man dressed as a traffic cone.
The Office of Ridership Interpretation at NYC Transit, a small unit housed in a former token booth near Borough Hall, said it had trouble separating Halloween revelers from ordinary passengers. “On Saturday we counted roughly 400,000 people in costume,” said deputy analyst Gerald Pinkney. “Then on Monday we counted the same number again. We now believe some of them were just dressed for work on the L.”
The Unofficial Ridership Records
The MTA tracks only how many people tap in. A volunteer group called the Five Borough Straphanger Census tracks everything else, and its preliminary weekend tally, shared with reporters on a laminated sheet that smelled faintly of pretzel, included the following:
- Riders asking “is this the express?” at Times Square-42 St in one ten-minute window: 19,400, all of whom were told “yes” by someone who did not know.
- Silver marathon heat blankets left on 2 and 3 trains by Monday morning: 14,000, now classified by station staff as “reflective upholstery.”
- Longest continuous stretch a single rider held a pole using one finger: 41 minutes, set on a southbound 1 train by a man from Inwood who has asked to be left alone.
- Strangers who learned what conditioner another stranger uses, without asking: 2.2 million.
- Riders who announced “we’re all going to the same place” on the uptown C: 6, and they were all wrong.
The census also noted that the fare, now $3, remains cheaper than the city’s median plain slice, which Gothamist’s survey of pizza prices put at $3.81 as the old “pizza principle” collapsed. “For the first time in living memory, the train is cheaper than the snack you eat while waiting for it,” said census coordinator Rhoda Feldstein. “We had a nice run, slice.”
Comedians Report a New Kind of Closeness on the A Train
Marisol Quintero, a stand-up who works a Tuesday basement room on MacDougal Street, rode the A from Inwood to watch the runners and said the experience changed her. “Around 59th Street a man’s elbow entered my coat, and it never came out,” she said. “We’re not dating, but he knows where I keep my keys. He knows where I keep my feelings. At 34th Street he got off and I felt like I should send him a card.”
Desmond Okafor, who performs at a Bushwick bar between karaoke night and a trivia league, said the “109 percent of pre-pandemic ridership” figure was the part he related to. “That extra 9 percent is me,” he said. “It’s me standing on your foot. It’s my backpack in your armpit. The MTA is calling it a recovery. My chiropractor is calling it a renovation.”
A survey of 400 riders conducted on Monday by the Queens-based Institute for Commuter Proximity found that 71 percent touched more strangers over the weekend than during their entire twenties, 18 percent shared a single subway pole with at least five other hands, and 12 percent are now considered roommates under New York lease law.
Officials Credit Extra Trains and Extra Staff
The MTA said it ran additional subway service and posted extra staff at stations near the marathon finish line. Pinkney said those staffers received special training. “Their main job is to point in two directions at once and say ‘both work,'” he said. “If a rider asks a follow-up question, they are trained to point in a third direction.”
Runners who finished the 26.2-mile course in Central Park and then took the subway home were, according to the census, “the only people in the system who had a reason to look like that.” Several regular commuters said they were inspired by the marathoners and plan to train for next year by standing on the 7 platform at Grand Central during a signal problem, which experts say builds similar endurance.
Riders said they are proud to keep winning but would like a short break from it, a feeling shared by a rural America that has grown tired of winning and switched to simply surviving. “Every time the governor announces a record, I am inside it,” said Okafor. “I am a data point. I would like to be a data point with a seat.”
What the Records Mean for Your Commute
Readers of Bohiney Magazine, which has chronicled the city’s mass-transit indignities for years at bohiney.com, will recognize the pattern: the system sets a record, the press release goes out, and the rider who made it possible is still standing between the doors, holding a stranger’s elbow. Transit planners say ridership will keep climbing into the holidays, when the Rockefeller Center tree lighting and the first serious rainstorm at 5:15 p.m. are expected to compete for the next title.
Asked what riders can do to help the MTA break the record again, Pinkney took a long breath and offered the agency’s official guidance, which has not changed since 1904: please move all the way into the car, then a little further, then a little further than that, until you are standing in a car that has not been built yet.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/