The MTA’s drastic service cuts last year have forced thousands of bus riders to take to the already-crowded subways.
More than a year after the cuts rewrote the city’s mass-transit map, nearly every facet of the agency’s operations — including local buses, express buses, bridges and tunnels — has seen a significant drop in users.
Except the subways.
The drop in ridership is so dramatic that at a recent MTA committee meeting, one dumbfounded board member asked, “Where are the people going?”
The answer, in many cases, is underground.
“I’ve been in this business for 35 years and whenever you cut service, there’s a vicious circle with respect to the negative impact you have,” NYC Transit President Thomas Prendergast said.
“But at the end of the day, you have a certain amount of money; you have to provide the service. So that’s the conundrum we have.”
He also blamed some of the drop in bus ridership on the bad economy, which means fewer commuters.
Over the past 12 months, weekday subway ridership rose by 2.1 percent, according to the MTA.
During the same period, local MTA buses — which bore the brunt of the service cuts — had the largest drop, down 5 percent in weekday ridership.
NYCT express buses lost 4 percent during the same time period.
Even the MTA’s bridges and tunnels — which saw toll increases in January — have seen fewer drivers, dropping 2.3 percent of their weekday users.
The spike in subway ridership creates a different set of problems — like straining the aging network, which was hit with big service cuts in 2010.
“If people are abandoning buses, which they are, and turning to subway service — which isn’t improving — that means much more crush conditions,” said MTA board member Andrew Albert.
“There’s the possibility of turning people off to the system for good.”
The subway is so busy that officials just announced they were shutting down whole segments in Manhattan for five-night stretches several times each year, starting in January, for repairs.
That unprecedented shutdown of the famous 24/7 operation is being done because the system has become chock full of straphangers during weekends, when the MTA usually does repairs.