NEW YORK (WCBS 880) -- New York’s commuter railroads and subway system broke pandemic ridership records over the past few days as more people head back to school or their office.
Gov. Kathy Hochul says the New York City subway system, Metro-North Railroad and Long Island Rail Road all broke records dating back to March 2020 either on Monday or late last week.
On the subways, Monday saw 2.77 million subway riders, smashing the previous record set last week by nearly 40,000.
Metro-North also hit its record Monday, transporting 122,504 customers. Officials said the railroad has welcomed over 100,000 riders every weekday since after Labor Day.
LIRR’s record came last Friday, with a total of 150,895 riders. Post-Labor Day, the LIRR has had 135,000+ onboard every weekday.
"These record ridership numbers show that New Yorkers are returning to school, the workplace and bringing our economy back with them," Hochul said. "New York's comeback is underway, and we will continue working to increase ridership across our bus, subway and rail systems, restore riders' confidence in the MTA, and keep our recovery moving forward."
Before the pandemic, the average weekday ridership on the city subway system was around 5.5 million. Those numbers fell as low as 300,000 in April 2020.
"It is encouraging to see the subway system bustling with riders once again as more people return to their regular routines of taking the train to the office and to school,” said NYC Transit Senior Vice President of subways Demetrius Crichlow.
Crichlow set a goal of hitting 3 million daily riders in the near future.