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Posted by
GojiMet86
on Wed Dec 2 17:26:45 2020
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/02/nyregion/subway-ridership-mta.html
Crowded Subways? Yes, in Neighborhoods Where People Have to Go to Work
By Christina Goldbaum
Dec. 2, 2020, 4:47 p.m. ET
Just after sunrise at a subway station in Woodhaven, Queens, the rhythm of riders pouring onto the platform echoed life before the pandemic. In the 10 minutes between trains, the crowd swelled until riders lined the platform and filed into an arriving subway car, snatching the few remaining seats.
Though not quite as bustling as last year, stations like this one and others in Queens, Brooklyn and the Bronx are experiencing a surge as people who work in retail and service industries return to their jobs in person and join the ranks of essential workers riding the subway.
Even as stations in Manhattan that were once the busiest in the city remain eerily quiet — with as few as one-fifth of typical passenger levels — ridership at some stops in the other boroughs has surpassed 50 percent of pre-pandemic levels. The spike has breathed life back into a system that was drained of nearly all its riders when the pandemic hit in the spring.
It has also provided a little bit of a financial boost to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs the subway and is facing its worst budget crisis because of the outbreak.
Still, the widening ridership gulf between wealthier Manhattan neighborhoods and lower-income areas illuminates one of the enduring disparities of the outbreak: Many people with white-collar jobs can still work from home while lower-wage workers, who tend to be people of color with long commutes, are venturing to jobs daily even as the virus resurges.
“Everyone is practically sitting on top of each other now and virus cases are spiking,” said Adela Rivera, 45, who works in accounting for a cleaning services company in Lower Manhattan and takes the J train at the 85th Street-Forest Parkway station in Queens. “It all adds to the anxiety for sure.”
Her station — 85th Street-Forest Parkway — is one of a handful in Woodhaven, a middle-class neighborhood home primarily to immigrants from Latin American and Asia, that has experienced a revival.
Ridership at the station plunged to roughly 14 percent of usual in April, as people who work as clerks, waiters, housekeepers and kitchen staff stayed home after the pandemic lockdown shut down stores and limited restaurants to takeout and delivery.
But as the city slowly reopened, they had to go back to work. As one of the most public transit-dependent neighborhoods in the city, they turned to the subway and buses to travel. By October, around 50 percent of the station’s usual commuters had resumed riding the subway, according to an analysis of transit data by Qri, an open source data company.
“When I started commuting again in July, at least it was a bit emptier, there were spaces between people on the train,” Ms. Rivera said as she waited on the platform, the warm sunlight filtering through the windows of a train as it roared past. “Just look — it’s not like that anymore.”
The small station serves a fraction of the riders of the subway’s hubs in Manhattan: 85th Street-Forest Parkway station handled an average of 89,000 people a month last year, compared with a monthly average of 5.6 million riders who traveled through Times Square-42nd Street.
But with ridership at Times Square and other major hubs like 34 Street-Herald Square and Grand Central hovering at just 20 percent of normal times, the surge of riders across many smaller stations has helped push overall ridership to about 30 percent of usual.
In Queens, more than half of stations have seen ridership return to over 40 percent of usual — more than any other borough. At Junction Boulevard on the No. 7 line and the 111th Street station on the J line, ridership has returned from lows around 10 percent of normal in April to over 55 percent in October.
“At the beginning of all of this back in March, we saw that the folks who were continuing to use the system were essential workers,” said Sarah Feinberg, interim president of New York City Transit, which runs the city’s subway and buses. “Today it continues to be those essential workers and folks with the longest commutes who come into work every day because they cannot do their jobs from home.”
The return of rush hour crowds to many parts of the system is a stark turnabout from the height of the pandemic, when the subway’s usual 5.5 million weekday riders had practically vanished.
In Manhattan, where the median household income is the highest of any of the five boroughs, monthly ridership was around 7 percent of usual in April, according to the QRI analysis. By comparison, the Bronx — where many transit-dependent essential workers live — roughly 20 percent of the usual ridership was still using the system.
In the months since, the system’s revival has been similarly skewed: Ridership has returned to about 40 percent of normal in Brooklyn and 45 percent in the Bronx. In Manhattan, ridership is still just 25 percent of what it was before the outbreak.
Many of those low-wage workers who are sustaining the subway will likely bear the brunt of the service cuts and fare increases that officials are weighing as the transit agency faces the worst financial crisis in its history.
“The question that the federal government and state have to wrestle with right now is what do we owe those essential workers?” said Nick Sifuentes, the executive director of Tri-State Transportation Campaign, an advocacy group. “Will their commutes to essential jobs get even longer and more unreliable?”
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs the city’s subway and buses, has warned of doomsday cuts like reducing subway service by 40 percent and steep fare increases to make up a $15.9 billion shortfall through 2024.
Transit officials have lobbied Washington for $12 billion in federal aid, but after stimulus negotiations sputtered this fall, the agency pinned the future of the system on the outcome of the presidential election.
Even with President-elect Joseph R. Biden’s victory, if Republicans are able to retain control of the Senate, they will likely resist the much bigger rescue package House Democrats have been pushing.
“The outlook is certainly better than we would have gotten with a second Trump administration,” said Nicole Gelinas, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative research group. “But it’s by no means a guarantee that the M.T.A. will get the full rescue package, the whole $12 billion that it’s asking for.”
For most riders still using the system — many of whom are only just finding their footing after being laid off this spring — higher fares and less reliable service that delays their already long commutes would be a severe hardship.
“I spend three hours commuting on the train every day,” said Angela Kerjah, 57. “And I’m already rushing back to my three little kids at home. If it takes even longer to get home, will I get to see them every night? I don’t know.”
Ms. Kerjah and her friend, Geeta Coyoc, 35, huddled under the small overhang protecting the Woodhaven platform from light rain as they waited for a J train. Both women work as housekeepers for families in Brooklyn and were told by their employers to stay home for four months this spring. But in July, they were called back to work and with trepidation returned to the train.
“I think I was more worried to go back out in July than I was before the lockdown,” said Ms. Coyoc. “After being home and looking at the news on a daily basis and seeing so many deaths, that’s got me scared.”
Since then both women say their concerns about commuting have been allayed after a scientific consensus emerged that the risk of coronavirus transmission on the subway was not as high as many assumed at the start of the pandemic, as long as riders wear masks and crowding remains minimal.
But with coronavirus cases climbing yet again in New York, threatening another shutdown, many riders have renewed concerns about their safety on trains, where they have less control over their surroundings and the safety precautions others are taking.
“At work we are distanced, I’m never really close to anyone,” said Walter Fernandez, 26, who works as a cleaner in an office building in Brooklyn and was sent home at the height of the pandemic. “But here all of the seats are full, you’re right up against everyone and people aren’t always wearing masks.”
Earlier this summer he was called back to work, but decided against returning for fear of bringing the virus home to his mother, who lives with him in Woodhaven. But in August, with cases falling in the city, she returned to her work as a housekeeper and he returned to the office he cleans.
As cases creep up, so has Mr. Fernandez’s anxiety. “I don’t even want to think about it,” he said.
Ten minutes down the J line, Sayda Ighmor, 35, sat on a wooden bench at 111th Street Station on her way to work as a home health aide. Every morning Ms. Ighmor takes the train five stops and then gets on the Q54 bus to get to work, which is the most nerve-racking part of her day.
“It’s so crowded on the buses — even more than the train — and some people still don’t wear masks,” she said.
Every afternoon when she arrives home, she carefully places her shoes beside the door, strips off her work clothes and jumps in the shower.
Ms. Ighmor opted to keep her two children home to do remote schooling this fall because it felt safer. But both she and her husband, who works in food delivery, have continued to work throughout the pandemic.
“You have to go to work,” she said. “You have to pay your bills. What should I do?”
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