New York City subways set one-day ridership record in October

Single-day ridership on MTA New York City Transit's (NYCT) subways reached a new record of 6,217,621 on Oct. 29.

The figure represents an increase of 50,000 riders from the system's previous high-water mark set last year, NYCT officials said in a press release.

The new record occurred on one of five days in October when ridership exceeded last year's one-day record, and was one of 15 weekdays with ridership above 6 million, according to NYCT.

Additionally, average weekday subway ridership in October 2015 totaled 5.974 million — the highest of any month in more than 45 years.

"The relentless growth in subway ridership shows how this century-old network is critical to New York's future," said MTA Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Thomas Prendergast. "Our challenge is to maintain and improve the subways even as growing ridership puts more demands on the system."

The agency's capital program will help handle increased ridership, he said. The program calls for buying almost 1,000 new subway cars, providing real-time arrival information on lettered subway lines, installing modern signal systems and performing other capacity improvements.