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The Metropolitan Transportation Authority saw a record-breaking surge of riders over Halloween and New York City Marathon weekend — but many fed-up straphangers complained of dangerously crowded platforms and lengthy delays.
Some 3.14 million riders took the subway Sunday, marking an all-time ridership high for the first day of the week and shattering last year’s record by 11%, Governor Kathy Hochul and the MTA announced Monday.
Similarly, the day before, on Halloween, straphangers smashed the previous post-pandemic Saturday record with 3.59 million riders, marking the most on a single Saturday since 2016.
Even before the Big Apple’s mammoth weekend, the subway carried a whopping 4.72 million passengers on a record-shattering Thursday, marking the highest single-day ridership since the pandemic with a 9.7% increase in ridership compared to the same day last year.
“From the streets to the subways, New Yorkers were on the move this weekend in record numbers,” Hochul said in a press release.
“The subway is the lifeblood of our city and from Halloween to the marathon, the major events that make New York special simply would not be possible without mass transit,” the governor added.
Chair and CEO of the MTA Janno Lieber also chimed in.
“Spirits were high this weekend for Halloween and the NYC Marathon, but subway ridership was even higher,” Lieber said. “These record-breaking numbers show once again that when New York goes big, it goes by mass transit.”
In anticipation of the spike in ridership over the busy weekend, the MTA said additional subway services were deployed.
However, the agency appeared to have underestimated the surge as complaints from straphangers and videos of packed subway platforms flooded social media.
One clip showed a wave of straphangers shoulder-to-shoulder trying to exit the West 4th Street station in Greenwich Village on Halloween night, while another captured throngs of riders trying to escape Second Avenue station alongside the caption: “The subway on Halloween is not for the weak.”
Many New Yorkers were irked by Hochul’s self-congratulatory post on the ridership uptick as they were thrown into major travel headaches on the subway.
“Service was woefully inadequate given how many people were using the system. When is the MTA going to learn!?,” one social media user wrote beneath the governor’s X post.
“Platform at Union Square and Platform at Bedford Ave were dangerously crowded. This happens every year. 3.1 million people used the system and had a bad experience,” he added.
“For the busiest Sunday ever, they definitely could’ve ran more trains. Trains were crush-loaded at 3 am from Halloween and trains were only running every 20-30 minutes,” complained another.
“Sis. Don’t piss me off. The estimated wait time for the 6 at 8am was 24 minutes. I walked 20 blocks faster than the train would arrive. Delete this,” another user fumed below the governor’s celebratory post.
The MTA said the milestones come off the back of recently announced post-pandemic subway ridership records — including a five-day weekday high of 22.32 million straphangers between Oct. 19 and Oct. 23 and 27.87 million across seven days during the same week.
