Walking and biking to the office may be good for New Yorkers. It’s not so great for the MTA.
Changes in commuting habits are part of the new pandemic reality that has seen subway ridership stuck at 60% of the old normal, as a fiscal cliff looms for the transit agency.
This article was originally published on by THE CITY.
Prior to the pandemic, Avi Ashman would travel daily by train from his home on the Upper West Side to his job in Midtown, among the riders who combined to take close to 5.5 million trips in the subway each weekday in 2019.
But last Thursday, with his blue dress shirt untucked and unbuttoned, Ashman passed up commuting via the No. 1 or B lines. Instead, he walked to work, trekking through Central Park on a sunny morning from West 97th Street to his office at 50th Street and Sixth Avenue.