The New York City Subway has logged its billionth rider in 2024, achieving the milestone at a record pace for the post-pandemic era.
The MTA admits determining who the billionth rider was isn’t an exact science; the stranger deemed the lucky number 1 billion was Michael Carrasquillo, a Brooklyn resident who was getting on the train at Atlantic Avenue-Barclays Center.
A multi-modal New Yorker, he was taking the train Monday afternoon en route to pick up his car, which he would drive to pick up his friend and bring her to the doctor.
At the same time, MTA officials estimated the billionth rider would enter the system at 2 p.m. Workers stopped Carrasquillo and informed him he was the billionth customer, at which point he was “flabbergasted” and “humbled.”
“Riding the MTA almost every day really really impacts my life and everyone else’s life,” said Carrasquillo. “And we just really appreciate everything that the MTA’s doing to just make everyone’s life that much more convenient and that much better.”
To celebrate his achievement, Carrasquillo was gifted a tote bag, T-shirt, hat, and most notably, an OMNY card loaded with a month of free rides, a gift which left Carrasquillo with mouth agape.
The subway has still not fully recovered from the pandemic days, when ridership plummeted as New Yorkers were told to stay home and stop the spread of the coronavirus. The MTA has blamed this on the normalization of working from home, even as auto traffic over MTA bridges and tunnels regularly exceeds pre-pandemic figures.
Ridership continues to trickle up, though. September was the first month since the pandemic when average weekday ridership on the subway was over 4 million, a feat which was repeated in October. The subway reached the billion milestone early this year: in 2022, it was not reached until Dec. 27, while in 2023, it was Nov. 14.
Asked his thoughts on being a “one-in-a-billion” subway rider, Carrasquillo used his 15 minutes of fame to plead with everyone to be nice to each other, preferring that over his newfound title on the eve of the presidential election.
“If I could be [one in] one billion anything,” he said, “it would be [to] continue to be a decent human being, kind to everyone, selfless and transparent.”
