Tuesday, May 12, 2009

100 years of LES subway ridership

Over at Reuters yesterday, Felix Salmon had details on the following chart that uses spark lines to explore 100 years of New York City subway ridership on a station-by-station basis. Salmon focused on the Lower East Side.

As he writes:

"It’s well known that the Lower East Side has been resurgent of late — and so the increased traffic at the 2nd Avenue F stop comes as little surprise. (To give you an example of the timescale here, the grey box covers the years from 1952 to 1977.)

"What fascinates me about this map is how four stations all of which are quite close to each other can have such very different ridership experiences — a true demonstration of how New York really is made up of very small microneighborhoods."


2 comments:

Bowery Boogie said...

great find! the JMZ still not getting the love it wants.

Barbara L. Hanson said...

Last year, during rush hour (which I usually manage to avoid), a young woman behind me whined, "Whoever designed this station (2nd Ave) is [sic] an idiot. There are millions of people here and we all are in a hurry. Why are these fucking stairs so narrow?" I tried to explain to her that that was not the case when the station was built, but she looked at me as though I was as old as Martha Washington.