Op-ed | MTA continues rolling toward full recovery from pandemic

By Janno Lieber Posted on January 22, 2023

The new year has brought a renewed focus on two major MTA issues: restoring ridership and increasing public safety. Those aren’t new priorities for us. Indeed, we’ve been working hard on both fronts since the pandemic began almost three years ago.

What’s changed recently is we’ve made significant progress. Final counts for the year show the subways carried one billion riders in 2022, the first time the system hit that benchmark since 2019, representing an increase of 240 million customers, or approximately 40%, over the previous year.