NYC subway: The long, slow climb back to normal.

In March of 2020, NYC effectively shut down. Schools, restaurants, Broadway and offices. The city came back to life in fits and starts. Restaurants moved to sidewalks while residents sought out every patch of green space. But remote work settled in, crushing midtown and downtown businesses. Theaters would not reopen until September 2021 before battling another Covid surge in the winter of ’21-’22. It has been a long climb back.

The long climb back

Six years out, a “new normal” is clear. The city feels alive. But while commercial office vacancies have dropped and housing demand risen to pre-pandemic levels, compared to 2019, New Yorkers are still riding the subway less. Material shifts show up in the Fall of 2024 and again in January 2025 with the introduction of congestion pricing. But headwinds remain: an embrace of remote work over crushing commutes has capped weekday traffic at about 75-78% of 2019 levels. A rise in subway crime — both real and amplified by media — might still be a drag. Changes in entertainment habits mean fewer trips in for a night out. And millions of trips have shifted to bikes. CitiBike rides in NYC were up 115% by 2024 over 2019.

By 2025, weekend subway traffic had returned to nearly 90% of pre-pandemic norms. Cars are packed; it feels very “normal.”

The weekday/weekend split

Seasonal and daily differences reveal a more nuanced picture.

Fall: New surges and holiday outings

Starting the period from Labor Day through the holidays makes sense. Each September has seen companies pushing for a return to office as kids return to school. October and November have seen most of the heaviest single traffic days since 2019, with schools in session, the arts calendar in full effect, office parties returning and the holiday sights drawing people into the city. 2024 marked the most notable bump, with Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays showing more of a bump.

January to Memorial Day: The school and work grind

2025 showed a carryover from the Fall 2024 bump, a change that was boosted by the introduction of Congestion Pricing in January. Momentum has carried into 2026, with only Monday seeing a slight flattening, the likely result of two big storms that hit on Sunday nights.

Summer: Remote long weekends reign

Summer is when weekday ridership predictably bottoms out. Vacations and remote work stack on top of each other, and workers clearly have more leeway to stretch their weekends; even in 2025 summer Mondays sat at just 68% of 2019 traffic, compared to 75% in the first part of the year.

June 2026: A city on fire

June 2026 was by far the busiest June underground since 2019 — 3.78 million riders a day, 80% of the old normal, up 6.3% over June 2025. But as anyone living here knows, this was not a normal summer month.

The Knicks title run brought people out into the streets and neighborhoods at night for watch parties, then they poured into lower Manhattan on June 18, with the subway hitting 81% of pre-2020 norms, a day when non-parade goers were told to stay home. LIRR ran at 111% of its pre-pandemic norm and Metro-North at 102%.

The World Cup arrived mid-month and the annual Pride Parade on June 28th drove another surge of ridership.

Top 25 days by total subway ridership since March 2020

Looking at raw subway ridership, June 3 and June 18 are the only summer days to crack a list otherwise dominated by late spring and holiday season commuting peaks.

Method notes

Daily ridership comes from the MTA’s open data. Every figure compares a day to its pre-pandemic, same-week, same-weekday norm, so seasonality is already factored out. The timeline is a 30-day rolling average, sampled weekly through the end of June 2026.