New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
METRO-NORTH: COVID MADE RIDERSHIP PLUMMET 95%
President says vaccines point to ‘better days ahead’
Nikeya Kelly could see the traffic on Interstate 95 from her window seat at the Stamford Transportation Center.
“It’s not an hour drive right now,” she said while waiting for a Metro-North Railroad train to Manhattan on a recent Saturday. Kelly’s friend had offered to drive her back to the city, but the 44-yearold declined to avoid traffic. COVID or not, she refused to sit in highway congestion.
Kelly started riding the train again back in May 2020, when people were still buying toilet paper in bulk and dreaming of a normal holiday season. As everyone else abandoned their train passes and MetroCards, Kelly — mask on — leaned in. She even took the Amtrak to D.C.
But over the last several weeks, she’s noticed more people on the train.
Metro-North President Catherine Rinaldi has noticed the same trend.
“Ever since mid- to lateJanuary, we’ve seen steady increases both on the weekdays, and even on the weekends,” said Rinaldi, who became Metro-North’s president in February 2018. “Week over week, we’re continue to see increases. And the picture is even more encouraging on the weekends.”
Ridership tanked last spring, and fast.
Metropolitan Transportation Authority data shows,
for almost all of April 2020, passengers road MetroNorth 95 percent less than they did one year prior. On Sunday, April 12, only an estimated 5,100 people rode the train at all.
After a year of COVID, Metro-North ridership is still down roughly 78 percent from the MTA’s 2019 numbers. With far fewer passengers, the transportation authority has relied heavily on federal funding from the Biden administration. A $14 billion infusion from Washington has allowed the railroad to restore some of its services.
Nonetheless, there have been bright spots.
When the region’s COVID infection rate tanked in the early fall, more people started riding. After Labor Day weekend especially, ridership ticked up on Saturdays and Sundays, but fell once more when cases climbed in November.
For the last year, weekend ridership resembled pre-pandemic times most closely. More people ride on weekdays — especially essential workers going to and from work — but people have gotten more comfortable riding for pleasure.
“These are people who really don’t have to ride, for the most part. These people are choosing to ride to get to personal errands, to see family, to go to great destinations around the area,” Rinaldi said. The MTA announced this week that it would restore service to several popular destinations north of Manhattan, like the Appalachian Trail station and Manitou station.
“It really points to better days ahead, now that the weather is getting warmer, people are getting vaccinated, and more and more people are eager to put this whole thing behind them and get back to normal,” she said.
Tricia Hall is one of those people. The 49-year-old Stamford native and her teenage son opted to take the train completely of their own accord, just because it seemed fun.
“My son has never taken a train before,” said Hall, who now lives in North Carolina and works as a nurse. She wanted to go shopping near the Fordham station without having to worry about her car. Even though the rising COVID cases in Connecticut made Hall a little anxious, she still felt safe enough to buy a train ticket.
Leisure riders like Hall have always made up a significant part of the commuter train’s overall clientele.
“It seems like people are following the rules here,” she said while adjusting her black mask. That alone was enough to make her ditch the car and opt for Metro-North.
Along the New Haven line, which courses through lower Fairfield County, weekday ridership is still lower than it is in other parts of the system. Whereas Fordham station in the Bronx started bouncing back before other stops, New Haven Line ridership was down 80 percent in February 2021 over February 2020. Still, the dip mimics declines along the Hudson line (78 percent down) and the Harlem (79 percent down).
The main line’s suburban offshoots — the Danbury and New Canaan branches — saw even more precipitous declines. New Canaan ridership dipped 84 percent from the year prior, and the Danbury Branch was down 88 percent in the same period.
“People who work from home — people in professional services, in financial services — those people, by and large, are still working from home,” Rinaldi said. “They’re not taking the train into (Grand Central Terminal) every morning.”
Instead of business professionals taking the train from Stamford or Greenwich into Manhattan, there have been more service workers on Metro-North, more construction workers, more people who depend on the train to get around. Passengers also continue to ride between major Connecticut stations like Stamford, which was the second busiest MetroNorth station pre-pandemic, and South Norwalk.
People ride within Fairfield County too. Rinaldi noted that people often ride from stations like South Norwalk or Stamford and get off in Bridgeport. Not everyone is always heading towards New York City.
Metro-North’s slant towards working class ridership in Connecticut is particularly noticeable along the Waterbury branch, which splinters off the main New Haven line in Stratford.
Overall, Waterbury branch ridership is down only 60 percent, significantly less than the main line. Metro-North attributes the bump to the large number of essential workers living in the lower Naugatuck Valley.
But even stops traditionally associated with whitecollar workers are gearing up for more traffic.
Metro-North announced this week that it would add two trains to the New Haven line: one that arrives at Grand Central Terminal at 6 a.m. and another that departs the hub at 5:55 p.m. Some trains will begin stopping in Greenwich and Stamford again, and other stops in Westchester County will receive similar attention.
Rinaldi acknowledges that Metro-North is nowhere near normal — ridership on the railway lags even its closest counterpart, the Long Island Railroad. Still, she has hope and continues to take the pandemic one day at a time. The priority, she said, is raising the public’s trust in mass transit.
“There are people who are out there who have not ridden since last year and who are nervous about coming back,” Rinaldi said. “We want to give them the best possible experience that first time they come back, so that they see it’s still a great way to get from point A to point B.”