Eleven neighborhoods, three days, and 24 hours of estimated trips.
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Where New York goes
Three things the subway knows about the city, from MTA ridership estimates for January to August 2026.
Friday is the new day off
On a Wednesday morning, about 9,300 people ride from Long Island City to Midtown. On a Friday, 4,000 of them stay home.
Trips starting 7 to 10 a.m. Long Island City sends 39% of its morning riders to Midtown.On Friday night, the city goes downtown
Arrivals below 14th Street jump 61%, while the subway overall is up just 14%.
West Village, East Village, and Lower East Side, trips starting 8 p.m. to midnight, compared with a Wednesday.Williamsburg switches sides on Saturday
On weekdays it’s where people come home to. On Saturdays it’s where the city goes: arrivals at Bedford Avenue jump 72% while the rest of the subway loses 18% of its riders.
Trips starting 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., compared with a Wednesday.
Source: MTA Subway Origin-Destination Ridership Estimate: Beginning 2026, data.ny.gov. Each figure averages the eight monthly estimates, and every pattern holds in every month. Neighborhoods follow NYC Planning’s boundaries; Midtown means the Midtown and East Midtown areas.
A busy neighborhood is more than a ridership total. Its pattern of arrivals and departures changes through the day, and its strongest connections reveal which parts of New York move together. Explore eleven neighborhoods across Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx on an average Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday, January to August 2026.
The interactive pairs a map of the strongest connections with an hourly pattern of arrivals and departures. Stations are grouped into NYC Planning neighborhoods, so four Upper East Side stops become one arc instead of four, and the map draws only the neighborhoods that make up half of an hour’s trips. Tap one to see the stations inside it. It uses deck.gl—the visualization engine underneath Kepler.gl—while keeping the controls and storytelling native to this site.
These are modeled MTA estimates, not observed passenger journeys. Destinations are inferred from later MetroCard and OMNY entries, and values are averaged by weekday and hour across each month, then across the eight months. Arcs run between neighborhood centers, not along the route a train or rider took, and neighborhoods follow NYC Planning’s boundaries with names shortened to everyday use. As a check, departures from Midtown match the MTA’s separately counted hourly entries within 2% in every hour; arrivals can’t be checked this way, because the subway records no exits.
- 11
- featured neighborhoods
- 108
- neighborhoods across 424 stations
- 3 days
- Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday compared