As the severity of the COVID-19 crisis in NY accelerates, the subway is still running. There have been asks by both Mayor De Blasio and Governor Cuomo that people should not crowd into subway trains - they should instead wait for the next one with more space. If you have ever taken a subway at rush hour, you know that ask is a ridiculous one. Nonetheless, it might be reasonable advice as the number of riders starts to drop on New York City’s subways. And that really started to happen as of Friday (Mar 13th), which saw a citywide drop of about 30% when compared with the Friday the week before (Mar 6).

Even though it was a 30% drop overall between those two, each station saw it’s own unique drop in ridership, and I figured that those drops would not be evenly distributed. Though many companies moved to telecommuting last week, companies like retail operations and restaurants still need their employees to come if they are going to remain open. So, those employees can’t simply call in. Given that, I wondered if the drop in subway ridership was going to be larger in more affluent neighborhoods that have a higher proportion of employees that can telecommute?

To find out, I made a map of NYC subway stations, where small circles indicate large decreases in the number entrances at that station, and larger ones indicate small decreases. This is a bit odd, but the idea was to make it clear where there was relatively MORE sustained ridership when compared to other stations. Clicking on a station will give you the name and the % change for that station.





It becomes abundantly clear that as you go farther out - away from Manhattan - the drop in subway ridership is far less extreme. Those generally are also less affluent neighborhoods. To test that theory, I made a quick scatterplot which reveals a -77% correlation between the income of the census tract of the station, and the change in ridership.

What’s troubling is that this may mean an additional health burden on those who may have less access to quality healthcare and are less likely to have paid sick time (or a security blanket for lost income). The health risks of keeping the subway open are not evenly distributed among income groups.

Data used:

Subway Turnstile Data (via MTA)

Median Income by Census Tract (via esri)

Geocoded Subway Locations (via Chris Wong)