Low subway ridership? Blame the messenger!
Never mind New York City’s 28,000 COVID-19 deaths or 560,000 jobs lost during the pandemic — journalists are the real reason subway ridership has remained low over the last year, according to Interim NYC Transit President Sarah Feinberg.
Feinberg told ABC7 on Sunday that her best efforts to urge New Yorkers to return to mass transit have been hindered by sensational fears that COVID-19 can easily spread on trains.
The MTA was “really ill-served by some of the early coverage of the pandemic,” said Feinberg, pointing to video footage of sardine-packed trains and airports that hit TV screens in March and April.
“So I think people started thinking, the last place I want to be is in a crowded subway car,” she said. “Well, fast-forward a year, there’s now been study after study that shows that the subway system, the transit system, not just in New York but really everywhere, is really not a place that’s vectoring the virus.”
Subway ridership remains roughly 70% lower than last February, before the pandemic shut down the city. Turnstiles last week clocked some 1.7 million entries per weekday — down from nearly 5.5 million per weekday last winter.
Some studies have suggested mass transit is relatively safe from the spread of COVID-19, including one written by transportation analyst and MTA consultant Sam Schwartz.
But there has been little peer-reviewed research over the last year to offer any consensus among scientists to show the subways are immune from the virus.
It’s unclear what impact yearold news coverage has on New Yorkers’ commuting patterns. Data suggest high rates of remote work, empty offices and closed entertainment districts have had a much larger impact on subway ridership.
An analysis from the consulting firm McKinsey & Co. commissioned by the MTA last year estimates subway ridership won’t return to prepandemic levels until at least 2024.
Feinberg and other transit officials have over the past year instituted cuts to subway service — including service reductions on the C and F lines that have been made permanent. Feinberg told WYNC’s Brian Lehrer on Wednesday that those cuts would cause straphangers to wait an extra minute during rush hour.
Transit officials should expect to see ridership numbers tick up by a few percent this week as the overnight shutdown of the subway system will scale back to 2 a.m. to 4 a.m., instead of the 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. closure that’s been in place since May 6.
Gov. Cuomo last spring ordered the subway to close to the public during those hours in order to disinfect trains of COVID-19 and remove homeless riders.
“We will likely be less efficient from 1 to 2 a.m. and 4 to 5 a.m., but we still have confidence that we will be able to do everything we need to do to keep the system clean and disinfected,” Feinberg said at an MTA board meeting Thursday.
But Feinberg’s fight for New Yorkers to return to the subway may come to an end soon.
She’s retained the title of “interim” NYC Transit president since she took the job in February 2020. She said at the time her main goal was to find a replacement and that she’d only hold the position for a few months.
“I’ve got a lot on my plate so I’m not spending a lot of time worrying about my title,” she told ABC7 on Sunday.