Roosevelt Island station

New York City Subway station in Manhattan

On February 16, 1965, the New York City Transit Authority announced plans to construct a subway station on the island along the planned 63rd Street Line, as part of the island's proposed transit oriented development (TOD). TOD tries to increase the amount of residential, business and leisure space within walking distance of public transport. With this announcements, more suggestions for what to do with the island were made. It was soon decided to build the station with the rest of the line. The current 63rd Street Line was the final version of proposals for a northern midtown tunnel from the IND Queens Boulevard Line to the Second and Sixth Avenue lines, which date back to the IND Second System of the 1920s and 1930s. where the 63rd Street subway line was to be built in the upper portion of the bi level 63rd Street Tunnel. Beginning in the mid 1970s, Roosevelt Island was redeveloped to accommodate low to mid income housing projects. However, there was no direct transit connection to Manhattan. The subway was delayed and still under construction; trolley tracks that formerly served Roosevelt Island via the Queensboro Bridge were unusable; and the only way on and off the island was via the Roosevelt Island Bridge to Queens. An aerial tram route, the Roosevelt Island Tramway, was opened in May 1976 as a "temporary" connection to Manhattan. The Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation was formed in 1984 to develop the island, but was not successful until October 1989 when the subway station opened along with the rest of the 63rd Street Line. After that, a high rise luxury apartment building with some subsidized housing opened. By October 1980, officials considered stopping construction on the 63rd Street line. The MTA voted in 1984 to connect the Queens end of the tunnel to the local tracks of the IND Queens Boulevard Line at a cost of $222 million. The section of the line up to Long Island City was projected to open by the end of 1985, but flooding in the tunnel caused the opening to be delayed indefinitely. The MTA's contractors concluded in February 1987 that the tunnel was structurally sound, and the federal government's contractors affirmed this finding in June 1987.

The station opened on October 29, 1989, along with the entire IND 63rd Street Line. The opening of the subway resulted in a steep decline in Roosevelt Island Tramway ridership. The train served the station on weekdays and the train stopped there on weekends and late nights; both services used the Sixth Avenue Line. The tunnel had gained notoriety as the "tunnel to nowhere" both during its planning and after its opening; the line's northern terminus at 21st Street–Queensbridge, one stop after Roosevelt Island, was not connected to any other subway station or line in Queens. The connection to the Queens Boulevard Line began construction in 1994 and was completed and opened in 2001, almost thirty years after construction of the 63rd Street Tunnel began. Since then, the F train has been rerouted to serve this station at all times. At an April 14, 2008, news conference, Governor David Paterson announced that the MTA would power a substantial portion of the station using tidal energy generated by turbines located in the East River, which are part of the Roosevelt Island Tidal Energy Project. This was part of a larger MTA initiative to use sustainable energy resources within the subway system. The initiative stalled due to development problems, but was revived in October 2020. To save energy, the MTA installed variable speed escalators at Roosevelt Island and three other subway stations in August 2008, although not all of the escalators initially functioned as intended. From August 28, 2023, through April 1, 2024, F trains were rerouted via the 53rd Street Tunnel between Queens and Manhattan due to track replacement and other repairs in the 63rd Street Tunnel, and an F shuttle train ran between Lexington Avenue 63rd Street and 21st Street–Queensbridge at all times except late nights, stopping at Roosevelt Island.

Fare control is in a glass enclosed headhouse building off of Main Street. The headhouse has a feature that is unusual to the subway system: it uses recordings of birds to try to scare away city pigeons, and these bird recordings play every few minutes or so. The system was installed because of problems with pigeons entering the headhouse and leaving feathers and droppings both inside and around the building. Previous efforts, like spiked ledges, had been ineffective in curbing the pigeon population of the area immediately next to the station.

When the station opened in 1989, daily ridership on the Roosevelt Island Tramway, an aerial tramway that also connects Roosevelt Island to Manhattan, decreased sharply, from 5,500 daily riders in 1989 to 3,000 by 1993. In 2008, the subway station saw about 5,900 daily riders, compared to 3,000 for the tram, which had maintained steady ridership. Over the next eight years, the station experienced additional ridership growth. In 2016, an average of 6,630 daily riders used the station on an average weekday. This amounted to 2,110,471 total riders entering the station in 2016. On the southern portion of the island, Cornell University and Technion – Israel Institute of Technology opened their new Cornell Tech campus, On Main Street is the Good Shepherd Church, A ballfield on the island is named Firefighters Field The Roosevelt Island Tramway, which was intended to be replaced by the subway, is still in service with a terminal just south of the subway entrance.