Subway and bus ridership for 2025

2025 subway ridership increased to 1,282 million, up 7.3% year-over-year and reaching approximately 75% of 2019 pre-pandemic levels. Average weekday ridership grew 7.1% to 4.002 million (73% of 2019 levels), reflecting the continued impact of hybrid and remote work on commuting patterns. Weekend ridership increased 9.3% to 4.83 million (88% of 2019 levels), outpacing weekday growth and driven by the continued rebound in leisure travel, tourism, and social activities. Overall growth was further supported by MTA efforts to combat fare evasion, with the subway fare evasion rate declining from 12.7% in 2024 to 10.2% in 2025.

Bus ridership in 2025 increased by 8.1% year-over-year, rising to 442 million annual rides, marking a reversal from the 4.2% decline observed from 2023 to 2024 and reflecting renewed growth in overall system usage. Average weekday ridership grew 8.2% to 1.396 million, while average weekend ridership increased 9.4% to 1.598 million, with weekend growth continuing to outpace weekdays.

In parallel, the Queens Bus Network Redesign was successfully implemented, improving service and reliability for the borough’s bus riders. The redesign focused on four customer priorities—reliable service, faster service, better connections, and simplified service—and introduced a new route type, labeled “Rush,” to help riders reach their destinations more quickly.

Student ridership increased by 42% from 2024 to 2025, driven by the Fall 2024 rollout of new Student OMNY cards, which expanded eligible travel to include non-school days and non-school hours.

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 over 4 million and bus has a daily ridership of approximate 1.4 million representing 73% and 65%, respectively, of pre-pandemic ridership levels.

Our system includes:

• 472 subway stations
• 247 local bus routes, 20 Select Bus Service routes, and 73 express routes in the five boroughs

Subways

We include:

• All passengers who enter the subway system, including passengers who transfer from buses.

We do not include:

• Employees
• Passengers who exit the subway
• Passengers who transfer from other subway lines, with the exception of out-of-system transfers, where you use your MetroCard or OMNY to make the transfer.

Buses

We include:

• All passengers who board buses using a valid MetroCard, OMNY, cash, transfer, Select Bus Service ticket, or student MetroCard

We do not include:

• Employees
• Non-revenue passengers (such as children under 44 inches tall traveling with an adult)
• B60, BX18A/B, M116, Q4 and S46/96 fare-free bus routes starting September 24, 2023, ending August 31, 2024.

Average weekday, Saturday, and Sunday ridership includes every weekday, Saturday, and Sunday in the year, except major holidays and days when the subway system was closed or operated fare-free.

Average weekend ridership is the two-day sum of average Saturday plus average Sunday ridership. Ridership on major holidays (New Year’s Day, Presidents Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas) is included only in the annual total.

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 A, C, E station is combined with the 8 Av L station.

The station names and lines stopping at each station reflect weekday service at the end of 2025.

In our spreadsheet, stations are listed alphabetically by borough, and the rankings are by 2025 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.

Download our subways ridership data.

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” for Brooklyn express routes and Queens express routes prior to the Queens Network Redesign, “QM’ for Queens express routes after the redesign, and  “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 NYCT Bus data. 

Download MTA Bus data.