It has been more than two years and New York City still has not recovered from the pandemic. Restaurants, shows, and Time Square may be full but the New York as we knew it won't return until workers come back too. The figure shows the share of people riding subways, LIRR trains, and driving using bridges and tunnels compared to 2019. Even with partial office re-openings, public transit ridership on weekdays has not broken 70%. It could be that some people are still working from home every day, workers are going into the office on different days, or they are driving more because they don't want to deal with public transportation. Bridge and tunnel usage is the only metric to have nearly recovered. It is also notable that weekend ridership has come closer to recovering. On some Saturday and Sundays ridership on trains is up to more than 70 or 80% compared to 2019. At this stage, it seems office usage may look very different for a very long time.

Source: MTA Info

Allison Schrager is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Follow her on Twitter here.