The busiest subway stations of 2023, according to the MTA
Photo by Lerone Pieters on Unsplash
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has released its annual list of statistics covering New York City Transit, the Long Island Rail Road, and Metro-North Railroad. The data, which includes ticket sales, MetroCard and OMNY payments, and the busiest stations, lines, and branches, was recorded from January 1, 2023, through November 2023. This year, the subway station with the most MetroCard swipes was Flushing-Main Street 7 station in Queens with 6.3 million swipes.
NYC subway
- Most OMNY taps: Manhattan’s Grand Central-42nd Street S, 4, 5, 6, and 7 station with 5.4 million taps.
- Busiest bathrooms: 74th Street-Jackson Heights-Roosevelt Avenue E, F, M and R station in Queens and Manhattan’s 14th Street-Union Square L, 4, 5, 6, N, Q, R, and W station.
- Busiest subway line: The 6 train, which is projected to carry roughly 140 million passengers this year, more than the LIRR and Metro-North combined.
A good sign for the system’s recovery post-Covid, the subway saw its one billionth trip six weeks earlier this year than in 2022. The billionth customer, identified as Brian Jones from Teaneck, New Jersey, tapped into the system at the 175th Street A station at 10:54 a.m. on November 14. In 2022, the billionth rider entered the system a few days after Christmas Day.
Buses
- Most passengers: The M15/M15 SBS with 16.4 million riders.
- Most miles traveled: The B6 at 1.7 million revenue miles.
- Busiest bus stop: Archer Avenue at Parsons Boulevard in Jamaica, Queens with more than 36,000 riders each weekday.
Long Island Rail Road
The statistics below don’t include sales from Penn Station, Grand Central Madison, and Jamaica Station:
- Most city tickets sold: Bayside with 242,000 sales.
- Most off-peak tickets sold: Ronkonkoma with 656,000 sales.
- Most monthly tickets sold: Hicksville with 23,000 sales.
- The branch with the most monthly tickets sold: 120,000 sales.
- The branch with the most ridership: Huntington/Port Jefferson Branch with 10.8 million trips.
Metro-North Railroad
The statistics below exclude don’t include sales from Grand Central Terminal:
- Most monthly tickets sold: Stamford with 18,379 sales.
- Most city tickets sold: Fordham with 301,905 sales.
- Most off-peak tickets sold: Harlem-125th Street with 576,590 sales.
- Line with most ridership: New Haven Line with 26.1 million trips.
The MTA Bridges and Tunnels hit a milestone this year as well, recording the highest traffic volume in 87 years of operations. The agency expects to record more than 335 million vehicular crossings in 2023, an increase of 1.3 percent over the previous record year, in 2019, when 330.7 million crossings were made.
RELATED:
