Нью-Йоркский метрополитен: История и современность

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The New York City Subway is a rapid transit system that serves four of the five boroughs of New York City, New York: the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Queens. Its operator is the New York City Transit Authority (NYCTA), which is controlled by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) of New York. In 2016, an average of 5.66 million passengers used the system daily, making it the busiest rapid transit system in the United States and the seventh busiest in the world. The first underground line opened on October 27, 1904, almost 35 years after the opening of the first elevated line in New York City, which became the IRT Ninth Avenue Line. By the time the first subway opened, the lines had been consolidated into two privately owned systems, the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company (BRT, later Brooklyn–Manhattan Transit Corporation, BMT) and the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT). After 1913, all lines built for the IRT and most lines for the BRT were built by the city and leased to the companies. The first line of the city owned and operated Independent Subway System (IND) opened in 1932, intended to compete with the private systems and replace some of the elevated railways. It was required to be run "at cost", necessitating fares up to double the five cent fare popular at the time. In 1940, the city took over running the previously privately operated systems. Some elevated lines closed immediately while others closed soon after. Integration was slow, but several connections were built between the IND and BMT, which now operate as one division called the B Division. Since IRT infrastructure is too small for B Division cars, it remains its own A Division. The NYCTA, a public authority presided over by New York City, was created in 1953 to take over subway, bus, and streetcar operations from the city. Since the 2000s, expansions include the 7 Subway Extension that opened in September 2015, and the Second Avenue Subway, the first phase of which opened on January 1, 2017. However, at the same time, under investment in the subway system led to a transit crisis that peaked in 2017.

Even though there was an earlier, underground railroad called the Atlantic Avenue Tunnel since 1844, it had no underground subway stops. Construction of this tunnel, which was built mainly to create a grade separated right of way for the Brooklyn and Jamaica Railroad (now the Long Island Rail Road's Atlantic Branch), began in May 1844, and the tunnel was open by December 1844. This led to South Ferry at the foot of Atlantic Avenue, where passengers could catch ferries to Manhattan. This extension, running under Cobble Hill, was closed by 1861. The tunnel was reopened for tourism in 1982, and closed again in 2010. The beginnings of the actual Subway came from various excursion railroads to Coney Island and elevated railroads in Manhattan and Brooklyn. At that time, New York County (Manhattan Island and part of the Bronx), Kings County (including the cities of Brooklyn and Williamsburg), and Queens County were separate municipal entities. Competing steam powered elevated railroads were built over major avenues. The first elevated line was constructed from 1867 to 1870 by Charles Harvey and his West Side and Yonkers Patent Railway company along Greenwich Street and Ninth Avenue (although cable cars were the initial mode of transportation on that railway). More lines were built on Second, Third and Sixth Avenues. None of these structures remain today, but these lines later shared trackage with subway trains as part of the IRT system. In Kings County, elevated railroads were built by several companies over Lexington, Myrtle, Third and Fifth Avenues, Fulton Street and Broadway. These also later shared trackage with subway trains operated by the BRT and BMT. Most of these structures have been dismantled, but some have been rebuilt and upgraded. These lines were linked to Manhattan by various ferries and later the tracks along the Brooklyn Bridge (which originally had their own line and were later integrated into the BRT/BMT). Also in Kings County, six steam excursion railroads were built to various beaches in the southern part of the county; all but one (the Manhattan Beach Line) eventually fell under BMT control.

The Beach Pneumatic Transit was the first attempt to build an underground public transit system in New York City. In 1869, Alfred Ely Beach and his Beach Pneumatic Transit Company of New York began constructing a pneumatic subway line beneath Broadway. Funneled through a company he set up, Beach put up $350,000 of his own money to bankroll the project. Built in only 58 days, its single tunnel, 312 feet (95 m) long, 8 feet (2 m) in diameter, was completed in 1870 and ran under Broadway from Warren Street to Murray Street. It remained little more than a curiosity, running only a single car on its one block long track to a dead end at its terminus. Passengers would simply ride out and back, to see what the proposed subway might be like. During its first two weeks of operation, the Beach Pneumatic Transit sold over 11,000 rides, with 400,000 rides provided during its first year of operation. Although the public showed initial approval, Beach was delayed in getting permission to expand it. By the time he finally gained permission in 1873, public and financial support had waned, and the subway was closed down. The final blow to the project was a stock market crash in 1873 which caused investors to withdraw support. After the project was shut down, the tunnel entrance was sealed, and the station, built in part of the basement of the Rogers Peet Building, was reclaimed for other uses. The entire building was lost to fire in 1898. In 1912, workers excavating for the present day BMT Broadway Line dug into the old Beach tunnel; today, no part of this line remains as the tunnel was completely within the limits of the present day City Hall Station under Broadway.

In 1898, New York, Kings and Richmond Counties, and parts of Queens and Westchester Counties and their constituent cities, towns, villages, and hamlets, were consolidated into the City of Greater New York. During this era the expanded City of New York resolved that it wanted the core of future rapid transit to be underground subways but realized that no private company was willing to put up the enormous capital required to build beneath the streets. Planning for the system began with the Rapid Transit Act, authorized by the New York State Legislature on May 22, 1894, which created the Board of Rapid Transit Railroad Commissioners. The act provided that the commission would lay out routes with the consent of property owners and local authorities, either build the system or sell a franchise for its construction, and lease the operation to a private firm. A line through Lafayette Street (then Elm Street) to Union Square was considered, but at first a more costly route under lower Broadway was adopted. A legal battle with property owners along the route led to the courts denying permission to build through Broadway in 1896. The Elm Street route was chosen later that year, cutting west to Broadway via 42nd Street. This new plan, formally adopted on January 14, 1897, consisted of a line from City Hall north to Kingsbridge and a branch under Lenox Avenue and to Bronx Park, to have four tracks from City Hall to the junction at 103rd Street. The "awkward alignment along Forty Second Street", as the commission put it, was necessitated by objections to using Broadway south of 34th Street. Legal challenges were resolved in 1899.

A contract, later known as Contract 1, was executed on February 21, 1900, between the commission and the Rapid Transit Construction Company, organized by John B. McDonald and funded by August Belmont, for the construction of the subway and a 50 year operating lease from the opening of the line. The project was divided into fifteen sections on which subcontractors submitted construction bids. Ground was broken in a ceremony at City Hall on March 24, celebrated at the time as "Tunnel Day". A plan for an extension from City Hall to the Long Island Rail Road's Flatbush Avenue terminal station (now known as Atlantic Terminal) in Brooklyn was adopted on January 24, 1901, and Contract 2, giving a lease of 35 years, was executed between the commission and the Rapid Transit Construction Company on September 11, with construction beginning at State Street in Manhattan on November 8, 1902. Belmont incorporated the IRT in April 1902 as the operating company for both contracts; the IRT leased the Manhattan Railway Company, operator of the four elevated railway lines in Manhattan and the Bronx, on April 1, 1903. Operation of the subway began on October 27, 1904, with the opening of all stations from City Hall to 145th Street on the West Side Branch. Service was extended to 157th Street on November 12, 1904. The West Side Branch was extended northward to a temporary terminus of 221st Street and Broadway on March 12, 1906. This extension was served by shuttle trains operating between 157th Street and 221st Street. The original system as included in Contract 1 was completed on January 14, 1907, when trains started running across the Harlem Ship Canal on the Broadway Bridge to 225th Street, and opened on August 1, 1908. The original plan had been to turn east on 230th Street to just west of Bailey Avenue, at the New York Central Railroad's Kings Bridge station. When the line was extended to 242nd Street, the temporary platforms at 230th Street were dismantled, and were rumored to be brought to 242 Street to serve as the station's side platforms. There were two stations on the line that opened later; 191st Street and 207th Street. 191st Street was not open until January 14, 1911, because the elevators and other work had not yet been completed. 207th Street was completed in 1906, but since it was located in a sparsely occupied area, the station was opened in 1907. The initial segment of the IRT White Plains Road Line opened on November 26, 1904, between East 180th Street and Jackson Avenue. Initially, trains on the line were served by elevated trains from the IRT Second Avenue Line and the IRT Third Avenue Line, with a connection running from the Third Avenue local tracks at Third Avenue and 149th Street to Westchester Avenue and Eagle Avenue. Once the connection to the IRT Lenox Avenue Line opened on July 10, 1905, trains from the newly opened IRT subway ran via the line. Elevated service via this connection was resumed on October 1, 1907, when Second Avenue locals were extended to Freeman Street during rush hours. The line was then extended to Fulton Street on January 16, 1905, to Wall Street on June 12, 1905, and to Bowling Green and South Ferry on July 10, 1905. In order to complete Contract 2, the subway had to be extended under the East River to reach Brooklyn. The tunnel was named the Joralemon Street Tunnel, which was the first underwater subway tunnel connecting Manhattan and Brooklyn, and it opened on January 9, 1908, extending the subway from Bowling Green to Borough Hall. On May 1, 1908, the construction of Contract 2 was completed when the line was extended from Borough Hall to Atlantic Avenue near the Flatbush Avenue LIRR station. When the IRT extension to Brooklyn opened, riders on the BRT's elevated and trolley lines over the Brooklyn Bridge began using the new subway.

The subway system began during the war of the currents when Thomas Edison and his opponent, George Westinghouse, struggled over acceptance of direct current or alternating current as the standard way to deliver electricity. Alternating current became the standard for non railroad purposes, but New York City Subway adopted direct current as more suitable for urban railroad purposes. The companies built their own power stations to generate their DC. To this day, the New York City Transit Authority converts alternating current to 600 V DC third rail to power the trains, as do most transit railways around the world. (The A Division uses 625 V DC third rail.)

The BRT, which just barely entered Manhattan via the Brooklyn Bridge, wanted the opportunity to compete with the IRT, and the IRT wanted to extend its Brooklyn line to compete with the BRT. This led to the city's agreement to contract for future subways with both the BRT and IRT. The expansion of rapid transit was greatly facilitated by the signing of the Dual Contracts on March 19, 1913. Contract 3 was signed between the IRT and the city; the contract between the BRT and the city was Contract 4. The majority of the present day subway system was either built or improved under these contracts. Both lines were built to IRT specifications. This meant that IRT passengers had a one seat ride to Manhattan destinations, whereas BRT passengers had to make a change at Queensborough Plaza. This came to be important when service was extended for the 1939 World's Fair, as the IRT was able to offer direct express trains from Manhattan, and the BRT was not. This practice lasted well into the municipal ownership of the lines and was not ended until 1949. On June 3, 1917, the first portion of the Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line south of Times Square–42nd Street, a shuttle to 34th Street–Penn Station, opened; a separate shuttle service, running between 42nd and 34th Streets, was created. This short extension was opened even though the rest of the route was not yet completed in order to handle the mass of traffic to and from Pennsylvania Station. Only the northern part of the station was opened at this time, and piles of plaster, rails, and debris could be seen on the rest of the platforms. This shuttle was extended south to South Ferry, with a shorter shuttle on the Brooklyn branch between Chambers Street and Wall Street, on July 1, 1918. The new portion of the Lexington Avenue Line from Grand Central to 125th Street opened on July 17, 1918. Until the evening of August 1, 1918, it ran as a shuttle on the local tracks only, terminating at 42nd Street and at 167th Street on the IRT Jerome Avenue Line (where the connection from the elevated IRT Ninth Avenue Line merged). The new "H" system was implemented on August 1, 1918, joining the two halves of the Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line, and the two halves of the Lexington Avenue Line. An immediate result of the switch was the need to transfer using the 42nd Street Shuttle. The completion of the "H" system doubled the capacity of the IRT system. The Dual Contracts resulted in the expansion of New York City; people moved to the newly built homes along the newly built subway lines. These homes were affordable, about the same cost as the houses in Brooklyn and Manhattan. People were allowed to move to better parts at the same cost and could have a better and more comfortable life in the suburbs. On January 1, 1936, a second trunk line—the Sixth Avenue Line—opened from West Fourth Street (where it splits from the Eighth Avenue Line) to East Broadway. The new subway line's construction required the suspension of streetcars on the avenue. The city, wanting to save money by not having to underpin the IRT Sixth Avenue Line before the elevated line was closed, bought the line for $12.5 million and terminated operations on December 5, 1938. To help compensate for the loss in service, service on the Ninth Avenue Elevated was increased. The first section of the Queens Boulevard Line, west from Roosevelt Avenue to 50th Street, opened on August 19, 1933. trains ran local to Hudson Terminal (today's World Trade Center) in Manhattan, while the (predecessor to current G service) ran as a shuttle service between Queens Plaza and Nassau Avenue on the IND Crosstown Line. An extension east to Union Turnpike opened on December 31, 1936. That day, express service began on the Queens Boulevard Line during rush hours, with E trains running express west of 71st–Continental Avenues, and GG trains taking over the local during rush hours. The initial headway for express service was between three and five minutes. 23rd Street–Ely Avenue station opened as an in fill station on August 28, 1939. Upon its extension into Jamaica, the line drew Manhattan bound passengers away from the nearby BMT Jamaica Line subway and the Long Island Rail Road. On July 1, 1937, a third trunk line, the Crosstown Line, opened from Nassau Avenue to Bergen Street. On August 28, 1922, Mayor John Francis Hylan announced that his new system would comprise 100 mile (161 km) of currently operating routes and another 100 miles of new routes, to be completed by December 31, 1925, and in competition with the IRT and BMT. In 1926, a loop subway service was planned to be built to New Jersey. The most grandiose plan, conceived in 1929, was to be part of the city operated IND. By 1939, with unification planned, all three systems were included. As this grandiose expansion was not built, the subway system is only 70% of what it was planned to be. Magnificently engineered, almost entirely underground, with 670 feet (204 m) platforms and flying junctions throughout, the IND system tripled the city's rapid transit debt, contributing to the demise of plans for an ambitious expansion proposed before the first line of the first system was even opened. After the IND Sixth Avenue Line was completed, only 28 new stations were built. Five stations were on the abandoned NYW&B operated IRT Dyre Avenue Line, fourteen stations were on the abandoned LIRR Rockaway Beach Branch (now the IND Rockaway Line), six were on the Archer Avenue Lines and 63rd Street Lines (built as part of a 1968 plan), two stations (57th Street and Grand Street) were part of the Chrystie Street Connection, and the Harlem–148th Street terminal. Four MTA Capital Construction funded stations (the 34th Street station on the 7 Subway Extension and the three stations on the Second Avenue Subway) have been constructed with up to 14 more planned. The city's subway construction costs are the highest in the world, which has slowed the pace of expansion.

In June 1940, the IND's operator the New York City Board of Transportation took over the transportation assets of the IRT and BMT. A combination of factors had this takeover coincide with the end of the major rapid transit building eras in New York City. The city immediately began to eliminate what it considered redundancy in the system, closing several elevated lines including the IRT Ninth Avenue Line and most of the IRT Second Avenue Line in Manhattan, in Brooklyn.

Despite the unification, a distinction between the three systems survives in the service labels: IRT lines (now referred to as A Division) have numbers and BMT/IND (now collectively B Division) lines use letters. There is also a physical and less widely noticed difference, as A Division cars are narrower than those of B Division by and shorter by 9 feet (3 m) to 24 feet (7 m). Because the A Division lines are of lower capacity for a given capital investment, all new extensions and lines built between World War II and 2007 have been for the B Division. A Division cars can travel on B Division lines when necessary but are not used for passenger service on those lines because of the dangerously wide gap between the car and the station platform. This stems from the IRT and BRT's long standing disagreement where the BRT intentionally built cars that were too wide for the IRT. The original IRT subway lines (those built before the Dual Contracts) were built to modified elevated line dimensions. Whereas the IRT lines were originally equipped with cars that were 47 feet (14 m) long, the cars designed for the IRT subway measure 51.3 feet (16 m) long. Both sets of lines did not permit cars wider than 9 feet (3 m). The clearances and curves on these lines are too narrow and too sharp for any IND or BMT equipment. The later extensions of the IRT, constituting the bulk of the IRT system, were built to wider dimensions, and so are of a profile that could support the use of IND/BMT sized equipment. and the surviving BMT elevated services over the Brooklyn Bridge (1944). The Second World War also caused renewed inflation, which finally caused a fare increase to ten cents in 1947 and six years later to 15 cents. Because the consolidation dragged in the first years after unification, some improvements in operational processes were rather slow, and soon the question of organization was raised. The outsourcing of subway operations to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey was favored at one point. On June 15, 1953, the NYCTA was founded with the aim of ensuring a cost covering and efficient operation in the subways. In 1946, Mayor William O'Dwyer initiated a program to lengthen station platforms to accommodate ten car trains. The first contract, which was completed in August 1946, extended the platforms at 125th Street, 207th Street, 215th Street, 225th Street, 231st Street and 238th Street on the IRT Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line for $423,000. Additional platform extensions were completed on the Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line in October 1946. On this date the platform extensions at 103rd Street, 110th Street, 116th Street, 137th Street, 145th Street, 157th Street, 168th Street, 181st Street, 191st Street and Dyckman Street were completed. This project cost $3.891 million. The platform extensions at the Hoyt Street station on the IRT Eastern Parkway Line opened in November 1946, being completed for $733,200. Stations along the IRT Lexington Avenue Line were next to receive the improvements. In January 1947, the 23rd Street, 28th Street and 33rd Street platform extensions were completed, costing $4.003 million. Work was subsequently completed at the Bleecker Street and Spring Street stations for $1.97 million. The $1.992 million contract to lengthen the platforms at the Canal Street and Worth Street stations to the south was completed in April 1947. In September 1947, a contract extending the platforms for stations in the Bronx was completed. The first stage of the plan was completed in June 1949, lengthening the platforms at Prospect Avenue, Jackson Avenue, Intervale Avenue, Simpson Street, Freeman Avenue, 174th Street and 177th Street on the IRT White Plains Road Line for $315,000. In September 1949, the Chairman of the Board of Transportation, William Reid, announced that the program to lengthen 32 IRT stations had been completed for $13.327 million. Reid also announced that the Board had created a five year plan to lengthen all remaining BMT and IRT stations to accommodate ten car trains. and the IND Rockaway Line in 1956, with an extension of the latter to Far Rockaway–Mott Avenue in 1958. Both of these lines were rehabilitations of existing railroad rights of way rather than new construction. The former line was the City portion of the New York, Westchester and Boston Railway, an electrified commuter line closed in 1937, While the latter is a long and substantial line, it consists mostly of a long right of way crossing Jamaica Bay with a single station on Broad Channel island and two branches on a peninsula that is only several city blocks wide. For a time, the IND Rockaway Line was considered its own subway division. Construction on the extension started in 1946 with planned completion in 1949. This extension was delayed due to the Great Depression and World War II. Both E and F trains were extended to the new station.

The originally planned IND system was built to the completion of its original plans after World War II ended, but the system then entered an era of deferred maintenance in which infrastructure was allowed to deteriorate. In 1951 a half billion dollar bond issue was passed to build the Second Avenue Subway, but money from this issue was used for other priorities and the building of short connector lines, namely a ramp extending the IND Culver Line over the ex BMT Culver Line at Ditmas and McDonald Avenues in Brooklyn (1954), allowing IND subway service to operate to Coney Island for the first time,

By January 1955, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority could theoretically raise $1.25 billion effective immediately In his 1974 book The Power Broker, Robert A. Caro estimated that this amount of money could modernize both the Long Island Rail Road for $700 million and the Hudson & Manhattan Railroad for $500 million, with money left over to build the Second Avenue Subway as well as proposed extensions of subway lines in Queens and Brooklyn. However, Robert Moses, the city's chief urban planner at the time, did not allow funding for most mass transit expansions in the New York City area,

On May 1, 1957, a standard maximum interval of 20 minutes between trains was put into place during late nights, with the exception of the Rockaway lines where it was 24 minutes. Some lines had service run as infrequently as 30 minutes. Also on this date, BMT express service was extended to 57th Street from 42nd Street. Earlier in 1957, local service on the BMT Jamaica Line was extended to Crescent Street from Eastern Parkway, and rush hour service was increased to run every 5 minutes. Under a $100 million rebuilding program, increased and lengthened service was implemented during peak hours on the 1 train. Switching at a junction north of 96th Street, delayed service as trains from the Lenox Avenue Line which ran local switched from the express to the local, while trains from the Broadway Branch that ran express switched from the local to the express. This bottleneck was removed on February 6, 1959. All Broadway trains were locals, and all Lenox Avenue trains were expresses, eliminating the need to switch tracks. All 3 trains began to run express south of 96th Street on that date running to Brooklyn. 1 trains began to run between 242nd Street and South Ferry all times. Trains began to be branded as Hi Speed Locals, being as fast as the old express service was with 8 car trains consisting of new R21s and R22s on the line. On November 15, 1962, the express platforms at Lexington Avenue–59th Street opened to reduce transfer congestion at Grand Central–42nd Street, and to allow transfers between the express trains and BMT trains to Queens. Even before the express platforms were added, this station was the busiest on the line. Construction on the express station had begun on August 10, 1959.

In the mid 1960s, US$600,000,000 was made available to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) of New York City for a large subway expansion proposed by then Mayor John Lindsay. About $1.23 billion was spent to create three tunnels and a half dozen holes as part of construction on the Second Avenue and 63rd Street Lines. The two phase Program for Action was funded as follows:
Phase I was to cost $1.6 billion and be completed over the span of a decade. It was worsened by the budgetary restraints on New York City, which limited its ability to remove graffiti and perform transit maintenance. By the 1980s, increased police surveillance and implementation of increased security measures (razor wire, guard dogs) combined with continuous efforts to clean it up led to the weakening of the New York's graffiti subculture. As the population of artists lowered so did the violence associated with graffiti crews and "bombing".

Ridership in 1975 had decreased to a point last seen in 1918, with ridership decreasing by 25 million per year. The MTA reduced the length of trains during off peak periods, and canceled work on several projects being built as part of the Program for Action, including the Second Avenue Subway and an LIRR line through the 63rd Street Tunnel to a Metropolitan Transportation Center in East Midtown, Manhattan. Ridership kept dropping rapidly, having decreased by 25 million passengers between June 30, 1976, and June 30, 1977; in the previous eight years, 327 million passengers had stopped using the subway. On May 27, 1975, the NYCTA announced that in September of that year 94 daily IRT trips would be discontinued, accounting for 4 percent of then existing service on the IRT. The trips were to be discontinued to cut operating deficits. Express service on the 7 was to be discontinued between the hours of 9:30 a. m. and 3:30 p. m. and was to be replaced by more frequent local service. During the same month, the NYCTA was considering making the A train a local at all times except rush hours, when it would remain an express. On December 17, 1975, the MTA announced that a 4.4 percent cutback of rush hour train service would take place on January 18, 1976. The cutbacks, the third of the year, trimmed 279 train runs from the previous 6,900. Service was most drastically reduced on the Lexington Avenue Line, with seven fewer southbound express trains during the morning rush hours. The cuts were the first of a three phase program that was put in effect between January and July 1976. The cuts permitted a savings of $12.6 million a year for the NYCTA, which had an increasing deficit. Other subway services were changed or discontinued as part of the plan. On January 19, F trains were planned to stop running express in Brooklyn, and the GG was to be cut back to Smith–Ninth Streets. In April 1975 it was planned that all rush hour 1 trains would begin running to 242nd Street; these runs had previously terminated at 137th Street. During midday hours, trains on the 1 were to be shortened to five cars. In July, it was planned that the EE would be discontinued; N trains were to have been extended to Continental Avenue via the Queens Boulevard Line to replace it. Manhattan bound N trains were to continue running express, while in the opposite direction they would run local. N trains would alternate between terminating at Whitehall Street or Coney Island during rush hours. CC trains, in July, were planned to be extended from Hudson Terminal to Rockaway Park replacing the E, which was to have been cut back to Hudson Terminal. The K was planned to be discontinued in July. In 1986, the NYCTA launched a study to determine whether to close 79 stations on 11 routes, spread across all four of the boroughs that the subway system served, due to low ridership and high repair costs. Numerous figures, including New York City Council member Carol Greitzer, criticized the plans.

Subway ridership increased through the 1990s. Throughout David Dinkins's mayoralty from 1989 to 1993, the city went from being in debt to having a $200 million surplus, which was achieved by raising taxes. However, Dinkins's tax plans were unpopular, and he lost the 1993 election to Rudy Giuliani. State lawmakers also reduced MTA funding in the 1990s, which remained mostly unchanged through the 2000s.

The September 11 attacks resulted in service disruptions on lines running through Lower Manhattan. Tracks and stations under the World Trade Center were shut down within minutes of the first plane crash. All remaining New York City Subway service was suspended from 10:20am to 12:48pm. Immediately after the attacks and more so after the collapses of the Twin Towers, many trains running in Lower Manhattan lost power and had to be evacuated through the tunnels. Some trains had power, but the signals did not, requiring special operating procedures to ensure safety. The IRT Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line, which ran below the World Trade Center between Chambers Street and Rector Street was the most destroyed. Sections of the tunnel as well as Cortlandt Street were badly damaged and had to be rebuilt. Service was immediately suspended south of Chambers Street and then cut back to 14th Street. There was also subsequent flooding on the line south of 34th Street–Penn Station. After the flood was cleaned up, express service was able to resume on September 17 with trains running between Van Cortlandt Park–242nd Street and 14th Street, making local stops north of and express stops south of 96th Street, while and trains made all stops in Manhattan (but bypassed all stations between Canal Street and Fulton Street until October 1). 1/9 skip stop service was suspended. After a few switching delays at 96th Street, service was changed on September 19. The train resumed local service in Manhattan, but was extended to New Lots Avenue in Brooklyn (switching onto the express tracks at Chambers Street) to replace the 3, which now terminated at 14th Street as an express. The train continued to make local stops in Manhattan and service between Chambers Street and South Ferry as well as skip stop service remained suspended. Normal service on all four trains was restored September 15, 2002. Service on the BMT Broadway Line was also disrupted because the tracks from the Montague Street Tunnel run adjacent to the World Trade Center and there were concerns that train movements could cause unsafe settling of the debris pile. Cortlandt Street station, which sits under Church Street, sustained significant damage in the collapse of the towers. It was closed until September 15, 2002, for removal of debris, structural repairs, and restoration of the track beds, which had suffered flood damage in the aftermath of the collapse. Starting September 17, 2001, the and service was suspended and respectively replaced by the (which was extended to Coney Island–Stillwell Avenue via the BMT Montague Street Tunnel, BMT Fourth Avenue Line, and BMT Sea Beach Line) and the (also extended via Fourth Avenue to Bay Ridge–95th Street). In Queens, the replaced the while the replaced the All service on the BMT Broadway Line ran local north of Canal Street except for the Q, which ran normally from 57th Street to Brighton Beach via Broadway and Brighton Express. J/Z skip stop service was suspended at this time. Normal service on all seven trains resumed on October 28. The only subway line running between Midtown and Lower Manhattan was the IRT Lexington Avenue Line, which was overcrowded before the attacks and at crush density until the BMT Broadway Line reopened. Wall Street was closed until September 21. The IND Eighth Avenue Line, which has a stub terminal serving the train under Five World Trade Center was not damaged, but covered in soot. E trains were extended to Euclid Avenue, Brooklyn, replacing the then suspended train (the and trains replaced it as the local north of 59th Street–Columbus Circle on nights and weekends, respectively. The train, which ran normally from 145th Street or Bedford Park Boulevard to 34th Street–Herald Square via Central Park West Local, also replaced C trains on weekdays). Service was cut back to Canal Street when C service resumed on September 21, but Chambers Street and Broadway–Nassau Street remained closed until October 1. World Trade Center remained closed until January 2002. With dramatic increases in fuel prices in 2008, as well as increased tourism and residential growth, ridership on buses and subways grew 3.1% up to about 2.37 billion trips a year compared to 2007. This is the highest ridership since 1965. By 2013, ridership had reached 1.7 billion riders per year (despite closures related to Hurricane Sandy), a level not seen since 1949. In April 2013, New York magazine reported that the system was more crowded than it had been in the previous 66 years. The subway reached a daily ridership of 6 million for 29 days in 2014, and was expected to record a similar ridership level for 55 days in 2015; by comparison, in 2013, daily ridership never reached 6 million.

Several expansions started construction or were opened during the mayoralty of Michael Bloomberg from 2001 to 2013. In 2003, money was allocated for the construction of a new station at South Ferry, and in 2005, construction commenced on the new station. Initially, the station's construction had been opposed because of the high cost and low perceived time savings. The South Ferry loop station only accommodates the first five cars of a train, so that the rear five cars of a 10 car 1 train cannot load or unload. Because of the curve at the station gap fillers are required, and as a result the new station was built as a two track, full (10 car) length island platform on a less severe curve, permitting the operation of a typical terminal station. The MTA claimed that the new station saved four to six minutes of a passenger's trip time and increased the peak capacity of the 1 service to 24 trains per hour, as opposed to 16 to 17 trains per hour with the loop station. This followed preliminary engineering and a final tunnel design completed by a joint venture between AECOM and Arup. A ceremonial groundbreaking for the subway was held on April 12, 2007, and contractor work to prepare the project's initial construction site at 96th Street and Second Avenue began on April 23, 2007. In October 2007, the 7 Subway Extension construction contract was awarded, extending the IRT Flushing Line to 34th Street. was intended to aid redevelopment of Hell's Kitchen around the West Side Yard of the Long Island Rail Road.

The MTA faced a budget deficit of US$1.2 billion in 2009. This resulted in fare increases (three times from 2008 to 2010) and service reductions (including the elimination of two part time subway services, the and ). Several other routes were modified as a result of the deficit. The was made a full time local in Manhattan (in contrast to being a weekend local/weekday express before 2010), while the was extended nine stations north to Astoria–Ditmars Boulevard on weekdays, both to cover the discontinued W. The was combined with the , routing it over the Chrystie Street Connection, IND Sixth Avenue Line and IND Queens Boulevard Line to Forest Hills–71st Avenue on weekdays instead of via the BMT Fourth Avenue Line and BMT West End Line to Bay Parkway. The was truncated to Court Square full time. Construction headways on eleven routes were lengthened, and off peak service on seven routes were lengthened.

Underlying the fanfare of expansions, however, there was a gradual decline in maintenance of the subway, and consequently, fewer trains started arriving to their destinations on time. Maintenance spending declined before rising again from the 1990s to 2012, but on time performance slowly eroded during that same time period. By 2017, only 65% of weekday trains reached their destinations on time, the lowest rate since the transit crisis of the 1970s. track fires, and overcrowding incidents. To solve the system's problems, the MTA officially announced the Genius Transit Challenge on June 28, 2017, where contestants could submit ideas to improve signals, communications infrastructure, or rolling stock. On July 25, 2017, Chairman Joe Lhota announced a two phase, $9 billion New York City Subway Action Plan to stabilize the subway system and to prevent the continuing decline of the system. The first phase, costing $836 million, consisted of five categories of improvements; the $8 billion second phase would implement the winning proposals from the Genius Transit Challenge and fix more widespread problems. In October 2017, city comptroller Scott Stringer released an analysis of the effect of subway delays on the economy and on commuters. The study found that based on a normal wait time of 5 minutes and an average wage of $34 per hour in 2016, "worst case" subway delays of more than 20 minutes could cost up to $389 million annually in lost productivity. By comparison, "mid case" delays of between 10 and 20 minutes could cost $243.1 million per year, and "best case" delays of between 5 and 10 minutes could cost $170.2 million per year. In November 2017, The New York Times published its investigation into the crisis. It found that the crisis had arisen as a result of financially unsound decisions by local and state politicians from both the Democratic and Republican parties. By this time, the subway's 65% average on time performance was the lowest among all major cities' transit systems, and every non shuttle subway route's on time performance had declined in the previous ten years. Further, the MTA's 2020–2024 capital plan called for adding elevators and ramps to 66 subway stations and adding modern signaling systems to parts of six more physical lines, to be funded by congestion pricing in Manhattan. Additionally, several other changes were proposed to improve service. For instance, in February 2019, several politicians wrote a letter to the MTA, asking the agency to consider splitting the R train in half to increase reliability. In January 2020, Stringer sent a letter to NYCTA president Andy Byford stated that the "abundance" of shuttered entry points along subway routes was contributing to severe overcrowding and longer commute times, and requested that the MTA develop and publicize plans for restoring closed entry points. The state of emergency ended on June 30, 2021, after previously being renewed 49 times.

There are several lines under consideration. This includes a subway line under Utica Avenue in Brooklyn; an outer borough circumferential line, the Triboro RX; a reuse of the northern part of the Rockaway Beach Branch; and a line to LaGuardia Airport. In November 2016, the MTA requested that the Second Avenue Subway's Phase 2 project be entered into the Project Development phase under the Federal Transit Administration's New Starts program. The FTA granted this request in late December 2016; The line will eventually comprise four phases, running as far north as 125th Street in East Harlem during Phase 2, and south to Hanover Square in Lower Manhattan in Phases 3 and 4. The MTA began soliciting bids in July 2023 for the first Phase 2 construction contract.

The spread of the COVID 19 pandemic to the New York City area in March 2020 resulted in mass closures of gathering spaces. After the MTA recommended that only essential workers use the New York City Subway, ridership started to decrease. Part time services were temporarily suspended. Starting on May 6, 2020, stations were closed overnight for cleaning, in what became the first planned overnight closure in the subway's history. The overnight closures were to be suspended once the pandemic was over, and bus service was added. In early May 2021, Governor Cuomo announced that the overnight subway closures would end on May 17, 2021, with 24 hour service resuming on that date. In February 2021, the New York City Subway removed benches from several stations in an effort to reduce the number of homeless persons sleeping on them, which during the COVID 19 pandemic was considered to be unsanitary. This move drew considerable backlash from riders who alleged that the removal of the benches amounts to disenfranchising disabled people and senior citizens, as well as being unfair to homeless populations. Although ridership decreased by 40 percent from 2019 to 2022, the number of crimes in the system remained roughly the same, prompting riders to express concerns over increased crime. There had been six murders in the subway in 2020; the following year, the subway recorded eight murders, the highest annual total in 25 years. During the pandemic, the subway system experienced several high profile incidents, including a January 2022 shoving death of a passenger in Times Square and an April 2022 mass shooting in Brooklyn. In response, governor Kathy Hochul and mayor Eric Adams announced a plan to increase police presence within the subway system. Amid an increase in violent crimes in the subway system, Hochul deployed National Guard and New York State Police forces to the subway in March 2024, as part of Joint Task Force Empire Shield.

Several upgrades and improvements were announced in the early 2020s. The new OMNY fare payment system was implemented across the subway between 2019 and 2020, The MTA announced in 2022 that it would install platform screen doors at three stations, and it reached a legal settlement the same year, agreeing to make 95 percent of subway and Staten Island Railway stations wheelchair accessible by 2055. Despite decreased ridership due to the COVID 19 pandemic, the MTA had balanced its budget by 2023 while also raising fares and increasing service on several subway routes.

Many train accidents have been recorded since 1918, when a train bound for South Ferry smashed into two trains halted near Jackson Avenue on the IRT White Plains Road Line in the Bronx. Only accidents that caused injuries, deaths, or significant damage are listed. October 3, 1918: A collision at Jackson Avenue killed two and injured 18. August 6, 1927: Two bombs exploded at 28th Street (BMT Broadway Line) and 28th Street (IRT Lexington Avenue Line). and injured 100. September 26, 1957: A motorman and three passengers were killed at an accident at 231st Street. May 20, 1970: Two Brooklyn bound trains crashed west of Roosevelt Avenue, killing 2 and injuring 77. August 1, 1970: A fire in the tunnel near Bowling Green killed one and injured 50. July 16, 1971: A fire took place south of 14th Street on the IRT Lexington Avenue Line, injuring 11. August 28, 1973: A 7 train was hit by falling concrete in the Steinway Tunnel, killing one and injuring 18. October 4, 1973: Three passengers were injured when a Lexington Avenue Express train derailed 900 feet south of the Bergen Street station. October 25, 1973: A fire in two train cars at Longwood Avenue led to a rear end accident. April 12, 1977: Two passengers were injured when an train derailed between the Manhattan Bridge and DeKalb Avenue. June 30, 1978: Three people were injured when an L train derailed, with nine of the cars leaving the track, damaging the track and platform. December 13, 1978: A train derailed south of 59th Street Columbus Circle crashing into the tunnel wall, injuring 16 of 100 passengers. November 20, 1980: A train derailed as it entered Chambers Street injuring 16 passengers. January 12, 1981: A train derailed on the BMT Brighton Line near Kings Highway injuring 10 passengers. July 3, 1981: A motorman was killed and 135 passengers are injured as a Manhattan bound train plowed into the rear of a second train halted for a failed signal between Sutter Avenue and Utica Avenue. April 25, 1986: An out of service train crashed into the bumper blocks at 179th Street, and the motorman died of a heart attack. August 28, 1991: In a derailment at Union Square, five people were killed and more than 200 were injured when a southbound train derailed due to a drunk motorman. February 9, 1995: An train and a train collided near the Ninth Avenue station. Seven people on the B train were injured, and the motorman of the M train was culpable. July 3, 1997: A Queens bound train derailed in Harlem, near the 135th Street station, injuring 15 people. April 12, 2000: A northbound train derailed near 68th Street, injuring nine people. September 10, 2015: A southbound train with approximately 80 people on board derailed near Hoyt–Schermerhorn Streets, injuring at least five people. June 27, 2017: A southbound A train derailed then caught fire near 125th Street. The derailment, caused by improperly secured replacement rails, resulted in 39 minor injuries. March 27, 2020: A northbound 2 train caught fire in the Central Park North–110th Street station, killing the motorman and injuring at least 16 other people. Since several other fires had been observed in nearby stations, the incident was investigated as a possible arson. September 20, 2020: A northbound A train derailed at 14th Street/Eighth Avenue station when a homeless man clamped wooden planks onto the roadbed causing the train to derail. Three passengers were injured. January 4, 2024: Two trains collided at the 96th Street station. Both trains derailed on impact, and 24 people were injured. January 10, 2024: A northbound F train derailed near the West Eighth Street–New York Aquarium station in Coney Island. All 37 passengers were evacuated. Additionally, in an accident recorded before 1918, a derailment happened on the Ninth Avenue Elevated in Manhattan on September 11, 1905, resulting in 13 deaths and 48 serious injuries.

Other accidents in the history of the subway do not involve trains; several people have been fatally electrocuted by the subway's third rails, and yet others have been fatally pushed onto the tracks. Fatal pushing incidents include the 2022 death of Michelle Go at the Times Square station. In 1960, a person nicknamed the Sunday Bomber set off a series of bombs in the New York City Subway during Sundays and holidays, killing one woman and injuring 51 other commuters. The bomber also set off bombs in ferries. On April 12, 2022, a mass shooting attack occurred on the N train, injuring at least 29 people.