Record Thanksgiving air travel is peanuts compared to NYC subway ridership

This column originally appeared in On The Way, our transit newsletter covering everything you need to know about NYC transportation. Sign up to get the full version in your inbox every Thursday.

Thanksgiving weekend is typically the busiest of the year for U.S. airlines — and Transportation Security Administration officials estimate 2.9 million turkey-stuffed travelers will take to the skies this Sunday, breaking a single day record. 

For frequent flyers, that’s a huge number. But for regular riders of the subway, it’s peanuts.

On most weekdays, the subway turnstiles clock about 4 million entries. The city’s buses record more than 1.3 million taps and swipes daily, and conductors on the commuter railroads punch or scan about 450,000 tickets. 

Those numbers remain down from pre-pandemic levels, but they dwarf what U.S. airline operations consider record breaking travel.

It’s a dynamic often cited by transit advocates, who bemoan the sorry state of New York’s mass transit system when compared to its airports, which have received billions of dollars in upgrades over the last decade using state and federal funds. 

“While it doesn’t bring Congress home for the holidays, the MTA provides nearly 7 million rides a day,” said Danny Pearlstein, a spokesperson for the Riders Alliance. “It’s a good time to be thankful for our common infrastructure — and for our leaders to renew their commitment to invest in public transit.”

Thanksgiving 2023 service changes

Even without that type of commitment from Congress, the subways may prove their worth to New Yorkers who stay in town over the holiday.

Construction work on the subways is also slated to cause less disruption to service than during other holiday weekends. The MTA also plans a handful of outages to perform track maintenance and upgrades.

Here's an overview of service changes:

• On Thanksgiving Day, subways and buses will run on a Sunday schedule, but there will be additional service on the 1 train ​and the ​42nd-Street S Shuttle in the early morning. Some subway station entrances and exits along the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade route will be closed, along with street closures in Manhattan. Read more here.
• Service on the F train in Brooklyn will be suspended from Kings Highway to Coney Island - Stillwell Avenue from Friday night through Monday morning for signal system upgrades.
• The Q line will not run south of Prospect Park this weekend.
• The M train will not run from Myrtle-Broadway to Delancey-Essex starting 9:45 p.m. Friday through Monday morning. Transfer to the J train at Myrtle-Broadway for service to Manhattan. Details here.
• Check the MTA's Thanksgiving 2023 official schedule for more changes this weekend.

Still, absent any disasters, even New York’s aging subways are expected to move millions more people than its airports. 

More NYC transit headlines this week:

• A 420-pound robot is now patrolling the Time Square subway station. Here's everything we know about it.
• The Penn Station entrance at Seventh Avenue and 32nd Street now has an ADA-compliant elevator, three new escalators and is 50% wider. Read more.
• Street safety advocates who want the mayor to do more to prevent traffic violence marched through Astoria last weekend, stopping at three sites where people were recently killed by reckless drivers. Read more.
• About 600 Metro-North workers have reached a tentative agreement with the MTA after years without a contract, averting a potential strike. Read more.
• Gov. Kathy Hochul signed a bill this week requiring the MTA to have at least one person with a disability on its board. (AM New York)
• MTA express bus riders who use wheelchairs say they often encounter buses with broken lifts — or bus drivers who don't know how to operate them. (THE CITY)
• North Williamsburg's 18-block Open Street on Berry Street has been turned into a permanent two-way bike boulevard. (Streetsblog)
• The city is down to its last two Crown Victoria yellow cabs — and they both have about 500,000 miles and are overdue for inspections. (The New York Times)

Curious commuter

Reader question: Why doesn’t the B train run on weekends?

Our answer:
The B train used to run on the weekends — but it wasn’t the same service New Yorkers know today. Prior to 2001, the Brooklyn branch of the B line ran along what is now the D line. The B line’s northern terminal would during some parts of the week switch from the Bronx or Harlem to 21st Street-Queensbridge.

The MTA switched things up in 2001 when the city spent three years renovating the Manhattan Bridge. While that work was underway, the B only ran north of Herald Square. When full train service over the bridge resumed in 2004, the B returned as a weekday-only express train between Brighton Beach and Bedford Park Boulevard. 

The MTA says all the B train’s stations are served by other lines, like the Q in Brooklyn and the D in Manhattan. But that explanation is unlikely to satisfy riders like Abigail as she rides the local Q train all weekend long. 

Want to submit a question? Email cguse@wnyc.org or snessen@wnyc.org with the subject line "Curious Commuter question."