No one goes to New York City anymore. So many.

On Thursday, December 12, there was 4,527,607 million rides were recorded on the New York City subway system, setting a new daily high since the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, there are 1.4 million riders on buses, 269,000 on the LIRR (which connects Long Island to Manhattan) and 236,000 thousand on Metro-North (connecting the northern suburbs of the city).

But just focus on the subway number for a second. The preceding days for air travel in the US have a share 3 million people pass through TSA security. On an average day in New York so far this year, there have been 3.3 million subway rides. So even post-pandemic, there are more subway rides in a typical day in New York than in a record day in the entire American air transportation system.

This newsletter is not a hot take; as a nearly 15 year resident of New York City, I just wanted to offer some perspective. I sympathize, to some extent, with conservative complaints about the state of America’s largest city, where Democrats lost an apparent amount of land in the November elections in relation to 2020, especially in NYC. There’s a lot one can worry about, from the high cost of living to crime to illegal immigration to extended school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic to decaying old infrastructure (and/or very expensive new infrastructure).

In these categories, crime is the most because there is a long history of people subjective estimates that do not line up with official crime statistics. There are various reasons for this. On the one hand, crime data can be incomplete if there is underpolicing or underreporting, especially for minor offenses – although this is usually not considered an issue for homicides (people notice the dead bodies). And there was a increase in murder in 2020 that the left is often too willing to fold during the “get rid of the police” phase.

but Violent crime rates have returned to average since then. And crime can be subject to sensationalism and tabloid-style headlines, especially in a city like New York with 8+ million people and a hyper-competitive local media market. Three recent events have put New York City crime in the news: the alleged murder of UnitedHealthCare CEO Brian Thompson on a busy Manhattan street in Luigi Mangione’s extensive day, and Daniel Penny’s trial, which recently acquitted of criminally negligent homicide in the “chokehold death of Jordan Neely on a New York City subway car in 2023.” And then a woman was very disturbing AFLAME on the F train this week.

What I object to, however, is the idea that New York is some kind of violent urban hellscape, especially when the accusation comes from people who don’t live or spend much time here. We’ll keep the rest of this newsletter specific to NYC; I don’t want to say what other cities are experiencing.

I live on a frankly not-particularly-nice block in the very central part of Manhattan, there are a few issues that I don’t mean to pass off as annoyances; This summer, for example, I saw a man die outside my apartment in the middle of an apparent drug overdose. But the base rate of violent crime is relatively low. New York has especially low homicide rates.

That includes the subway, where violent incidents occur THERE increased but very low in absolute numbers: 5 homicides in 2023 out of 1.15 billion recorded riders: your risk of being killed on the subway in one year in New York is roughly the same size as who was struck by lightning.

An Elon Musk tweet from yesterday is typical of the hell narrative:

Musk’s tweet, pointing to New York’s gridlocked traffic, reminded me of the famous quote by late, great Yogi Berra: “No one goes there anymore. It’s very full.” No one seems to deny that New York is busy these days: restaurant reservations are as hard to secure, real estate prices in the city constant after adjusting for inflationand we actually have a lot of new infrastructure from the West Side redevelopment to the stunningly beautiful new LaGuardia Airport. Even ours sports teams look better after a lost decade.

Are people afraid to take the subway in New York – or even to walk? I’m sure it is the others the people. I have the advantage of being a middle-aged white male who has lived in big cities his entire adult life and who generally doesn’t get in trouble. However, broader data suggest these effects are small, and it is unclear whether they are due to fear of crime. The number of subway riders measured by the MTA remains below the pre-pandemic baseline, but has steadily recovered, especially in recent months:

Subway traffic dropped to less than 10 percent at pre-pandemic baselines in April 2020, then recovered in a relatively linear fashion throughout 2021 and 2022. Since then, progress has been slow, but there has been a notable increase recently, which in recent days has returned to almost 80 percent of the baseline. Given time, this feature will likely feature new programs devoted to fare enforcement — which the city took a lax behavior after the pandemicespecially buses. (This could also mean that the actual post-pandemic ridership numbers are higher than everyone is reporting.)

It may take a long time to recover subway ridership to 100 percent, however, if it ever does. That’s because it shows two other trends: migration from the city in the suburbs, and more permission for work-from-home. Ridership data based on day of the week reveals:

Weekend riders recovered more fully than weekday riders, which mainly reflected leisure, shopping, etc. rather than commuting to work. Midweek ridership has also recovered significantly relative to Mondays and Fridays, days when employees with flexible schedules are more likely to work from home. About 20 percent of the workforce still works remotely or have hybrid schedules, and although it is concentrated among rich white workers, the subway is a relative equalizer in New York: the rich also take it because it is always the fastest way to get from Point A to Point B.

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Is commuter traffic higher by car, as Musk implies? Yes, but only a little. Bridge and tunnel crossings returned to nearly 100 percent of their pre-pandemic baselines by early 2022, and have remained relatively steady since then — though there has been an increase of 106 percent in recent weeks. Even a 6 percent increase could have a noticeable impact given how gridlocked New York is to begin with.

However, trips by commuter rail – the LIRR and Metro-North – have also returned in recent months. So basically, you have three different overlapping trends:

1. The overall demand for travel to and around New York City was high in the second half of this year by all measures, reflecting the city’s continued recovery (and perhaps a reduction in the permit for work-from- -home and greater fare enforcement).

2. There is a shift in population from the city to the suburbs — so, for example, LIRR and Metro-North ridership has recovered more fully than the subway, which is limited to the five boroughs, and

3. There is also some substitution of car trips for public transport, but this is not a big impact. Commuter rail trips average 84 percent of their pre-pandemic baselines through 2024, compared to 101 percent for bridge-and-tunnel crossings.

However, the subway remains the default mode of travel in the city. Bridge and tunnel crossings averaged about 935,000 per day through December — compared with nearly 3.8 million subway rides. There are problems with the subway, both with crime and with service reliability, but New Yorkers are a pragmatic lot who will evaluate the situation based on their daily experiences rather than sensational tweets or headlines.