NYC subway Sunday trips reached 81.5% of pre-pandemic levels in 2024, while average weekday ridership sat at 68% — a 13-point gap that explains why riders on non-traditional schedules find trains packed at every hour.

For riders who work nights, rotating shifts, or weekends, the subway has felt uniformly packed regardless of when they board — midnight, midday, Saturday evening, Monday at 7 AM. The numbers back them up.

The MTA's 2024 annual ridership data shows that Sunday subway trips recovered to 81.5% of their 2019 levels by the end of last year, while average weekday ridership sat at 68% of pre-pandemic — a 13-point gap that flips the traditional picture of the subway as a rush-hour vehicle. Average Saturday trips reached 79.6% of their 2019 baseline. Weekday ridership, still weighed down by hybrid office schedules and lower Manhattan office attendance, has lagged behind.

That gap widened further into 2025. NYC Transit reported in April that average weekend ridership in early 2025 jumped 11.1% over the same period in 2024. Weekday ridership crossed 4 million daily trips in March for the first time since 2019. By December 2025, nine of the 10 highest post-pandemic ridership days on record had all fallen since September — including back-to-back days above 4.6 million trips, crowded enough that riders reported being left on the platform.

"People are riding the subway, they're using transit. It's just a little bit different than it was before COVID," Regional Plan Association Executive Vice President Kate Slevin told Streetsblog in April. "Weekend trips — to see friends, go to cultural events — all of those trips are happening again."

The fleet hasn't kept pace with where the demand actually is. The MTA Board's October 2025 order for 378 new R268 cars — slated to replace aging stock on the B, D, N, Q, W, and Rockaway shuttle — won't arrive until 2028 at the earliest, and none will feature open-gangway design, which transit advocates say increases usable capacity per train by roughly 10%. The R211 cars already entering service carry fewer seats than the cars they replaced, as Dissent reported in July.

The subway is running as an all-day, all-week system. The capacity orders were written for a different commute.