New York City Subway stations

Station facilities and amenities

Of the 472 stations in the system, 469 are served 24 hours a day. Underground stations in the New York City Subway are typically accessed by staircases going down from street level. Many of these staircases are painted in a common shade of green, with slight or significant variations in design. Other stations have unique entrances reflective of their location or date of construction. Several station entrance stairs, for example, are integrated into adjacent buildings. Nearly all station entrances feature color-coded globe or square lamps signifying their status as an entrance (see below).

Turnstiles and entrance gates

The New York City Subway primarily employs two types of turnstiles: a waist-high turnstile, and a full-height turnstile known as a High Entry-Exit Turnstile (HEET). The waist-high turnstiles, the most prominent in the system, were installed beginning in 1993 along with the implementation of MetroCard, though they originally accepted tokens. The newer HEETs resemble several older turnstiles of that design informally called "iron maidens", and are prevalent at subway entrances without token booths to discourage fare evasion. Both turnstiles are stainless steel and are bidirectional, allowing passengers to enter with fare payment and to exit. A third older type of turnstile, the High Exit Turnstile (HET), is a black-painted unidirectional iron maiden and only turns in the exiting direction. Entrance is also available via Service Entry gates or AutoGates, which cater primarily to handicapped passengers or passengers with large items such as strollers and luggage. These gates double as pushbar Emergency Exits, though they are often used for regular exiting in crowded stations.

Lamps

At most of the system's entrances and exits, there is a lamppost or two bearing a colored spherical or cube-shaped lamp. These lights roughly indicate the station's availability (i.e. how often it is accessible): green means a full-time entrance and booth, red means either a part-time booth or no booth, hence either exit-only or entrance with MetroCard. Older lamps are completely colored green or red, while newer ones, called "half-moons", have only the top half colored, while the bottom half is milky white; this is to provide more light, and the half-colored globes have the same meanings as the globes with full colors. There are also some square lamps.

The meaning of the lights is poorly understood by passengers, and was originally more complicated. Green, yellow, and red lights were introduced in the early 1980s to indicate the entrance's availability, mostly to prevent muggings by warning riders away from entrances that were closed at night. Originally, green signified an entrance located at a full-time station booth, which was open 24/7 and had regular waist-high turnstiles; yellow signified a part-time booth, to which access to the platforms could be gained using High Entry-Exit Turnstiles (HEETs); and red signified an exit-only. This proved too complicated and yellow was dropped in the early 1990s. Red globes now indicate both part-time entrance or exit-only; indeed, a joke when the system was introduced was that "green meant go in, red meant don't. And yellow meant take a [yellow New York City taxi] cab."

Further, with the introduction of the MetroCard in 1994, the MTA converted many previous exit-only entrances to full-time entrances via HEETs. The introduction of half-colored globes further confused riders of the subway system, and as of a 2002 survey, the globe lamps are poorly understood.

Concourse

Many stations in the subway system have mezzanines. In underground stations, this typically consists of the first level below the street or the areas between the street and platform level. For open-cut, grade-level and elevated stations, prevalent in uptown Manhattan and the outer boroughs, the mezzanine area often consists of a station house at street level or above the street. Mezzanines allow for passengers to enter from multiple locations at an intersection and proceed to the correct platform without having to cross the street before entering. At busy intersections, they also act as a pedestrian underpass or overpass. They also allow for crossover between uptown and downtown trains on side platforms or a pair of island platforms, which is very useful when local tracks are closed for construction. Within the mezzanines are fare control areas, where passengers physically pay their fare to enter the subway system. In underground subway stations built close to ground level or under narrow streets, a characteristic of early IRT and BMT construction, the fare control area is at platform level with no mezzanine crossovers. Many elevated stations also have platform-level fare control with no common station house between directions of service.

Upon entering a station, passengers may use station booths (formerly known as token booths) or vending machines to buy their fare, which is currently stored in a MetroCard. Each station has at least one booth, typically located at the busiest entrance. After swiping the card at a turnstile, customers enter the fare-controlled area of the station and continue to the platforms. Inside fare control are "Off-Hours Waiting Areas", which consist of benches and are identified by a yellow sign.

For various reasons, including maintenance costs, decreases in ridership, along with crime and safety issues, many stations have fare control areas, mezzanine areas and entrances that have been closed. Many mezzanines that previously stretched the entire length of a station have been split or partitioned by fencing or permanent walls. These closed areas have been abandoned or converted into space for Transit Operations or the New York City Police Department.

Air conditioning

In August 2006, the MTA announced that all future subway stations, which include 34th Street–Hudson Yards, South Ferry, and all Second Avenue Subway stations, will have platforms outfitted with air-cooling systems. The existing Grand Central–42nd Street station also has these cooling systems; however, for the most part, subway stations lack air-cooling systems due to their expense, and only a few stations have ceiling fans.

Artwork

Many stations are decorated with intricate ceramic tile work, some of it dating back to 1904 when the subway first opened. The subway tile artwork tradition continues in a Percent for Art program.

The MTA Arts & Design program oversees art in the subway system. Permanent installations, such as sculpture, mosaics, and murals; photographs displayed in lightboxes encourage people to use mass transit. In addition, commissioned art displayed in stations and "art cards", some displaying poetry, are in many of the trains themselves in unused advertisement fixture slots. Some of the art is by internationally known artists such as Elizabeth Murray's Blooming, displayed at Lexington Avenue/59th Street station.

Accessibility

Since the majority of the system was built before 1990, the year the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) went into effect, many New York City Subway stations were not designed to be handicapped-accessible. Since then, elevators have been built in newly constructed stations to comply with the ADA. (Most grade-level stations required little modification to meet ADA standards.) In addition, the MTA identified "key stations", high-traffic and/or geographically important stations, which must conform to the ADA when they are extensively renovated. As of January 2017, out of 472 total stations in the system, 116 are accessible; many of them have AutoGate access. Four stations on the Staten Island Railway are also accessible. Additionally, there are 16 more non-ADA-accessible stations with cross-platform interchanges, as well as other same-platform transfers, designed to handle wheelchair transfers.

Entertainment

Since 1987, MTA has sponsored the "Music Under New York" (MUNY) program in which street musicians enter a competitive contest to be assigned to the preferred high traffic locations. Each year, applications are reviewed and approximately 70 eligible performers are selected and contacted to participate in live auditions held for one day.

At present, more than 100 soloists and groups participate in MUNY providing over 150 weekly performances at 25 locations throughout the transit system, for example Natalia Paruz, a musical saw player, plays at Union Square. In addition, any musician/entertainer may perform in subway mezzanines and platforms. On platforms, there may be no amplifications as this is part of MTA policies:

The New York City Transit (NYCT) is a subdivision of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) that operates the city's subways and buses. The NYCT authorizes these types of free expression in subway stations: "Public speaking; distribution of written materials; solicitation for charitable, religious or political causes; and artist performances, including the acceptance of donations."

Performers must not be within 25 feet (7.6 m) of a token booth or 50 feet (15 m) from an MTA office/tower, blocking access to an escalator, stairwell, or elevator, interfering with transit services or passenger movement; or in an area where construction is occurring. In addition, performance is prohibited during public service announcements and may be no louder than 85 dBA at 5 feet (1.5 m) away or 70 dBa at 2 feet (0.61 m) from a token booth. Performances are prohibited in subway cars.

Restrooms

Restrooms are rare in the subway system as only 133 open restrooms are in 81 of the system's 472 stations. Most station restrooms previously open to the public have been closed to the public and converted to storage spaces or for employee use only. However, there are a few major stations that have operating restrooms, including on the concourses of 42nd Street–Port Authority Bus Terminal; Chambers Street; 57th Street–Seventh Avenue; Coney Island–Stillwell Avenue; and Lexington Avenue/59th Street. The majority of restrooms in the New York City Subway are found in express and transfer stations, at ADA-accessible stations, and at terminals, though not all of the aforementioned types of stations have restrooms.

Newer subway stations have restrooms, including 34th Street–Hudson Yards on the IRT Flushing Line and three Second Avenue Subway stations.

Retail

Some platforms have newspaper stands that sell various items including newspapers and food. The MTA also installed retail spaces within paid areas in selected stations, including the station concourses of the Times Square complex and the Sixth Avenue concourse at 42nd Street–Bryant Park.

According to the MTA, the New York City Subway is home to 345 retail spaces, making over US$70 million in rent and licensing fees in 2009 for the authority. It is continuing to make efforts in attracting more diverse retailers and vendors to set up shop in the subway system.

Connections

Rapid transit and rail connections are available at designated stations to Amtrak, Long Island Rail Road, AirTrain JFK, Metro-North Railroad, New Jersey Transit and PATH. Connections to the Staten Island Ferry and privately operated ferries such as NY Waterway and New York Water Taxi, as well as intercity and commuter bus lines at the Port Authority Bus Terminal and George Washington Bridge Bus Terminal, are also available. Free MetroCard-only transfers to buses are available to MTA New York City Transit buses (including the bus rapid transit Select Bus Service), MTA Bus Company, NICE buses (Nassau County) and Bee-Line buses (Westchester County).

Station platforms and configurations

Out of the system's 472 stations, 283 are underground, 149 are elevated, 20 are in open cuts, 7 are at-grade, and 13 are on embankments.

A typical subway station has waiting platforms ranging from 480 to 600 feet (150 to 180 m) long, though some IND platforms may be as long as 660 to 745 feet (201 to 227 m) long. Platforms of former commuter rail stations, such as those on the IND Rockaway Line, are even longer. Due to the large number of transit lines, one platform or set of platforms often serves more than one service (unlike other rapid transit systems including the Paris Metro, but like some lines on the London Underground). A passenger needs to look at the signs hung at the platform entrance steps and over each track to see which trains stop there and when, and at the arriving train to see which train it is.

Almost everywhere expresses run, they run on the inner one (of 3) or two (of 4) tracks, and locals run on the outer two tracks. In a 3-track configuration, the center track can be used toward the center of the city in the morning and away from the center in the evening, though not every 3-track line has that express service.

There are a number of common platform configurations:

In a few cases, a 4-track station has an island platform for the center express tracks and two side platforms for the outside local tracks. This occurs only at three stations near major railway stations where the next station along the line is also an express station with the more common platform configuration. The purpose of splitting the platforms is to limit overcrowding by preventing cross-platform interchanges between local and express services. This occurs at Atlantic Avenue–Barclays Center on the IRT Eastern Parkway Line (2 3 4 5 trains) with an adjacent express station at Nevins Street, where the connection is to the Atlantic Terminal of the Long Island Rail Road; and 34th Street–Penn Station on both the IRT Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line (1 2 3 trains) and IND Eighth Avenue Line (A C E trains), with adjacent express stations at Times Square–42nd Street and 42nd Street–Port Authority Bus Terminal, where the connection is to Pennsylvania Station, one of the two major New York City railway stations. This does not occur with the connection to New York's other major station, Grand Central Terminal, at Grand Central on the IRT Lexington Avenue Line (4 5 6 <6> trains), which has no adjacent express station.

There is one notable 6-track local station, DeKalb Avenue on the BMT Fourth Avenue Line, where trains to or from the Manhattan Bridge either stop at the outer tracks of the island platforms (B Q trains), or pass through and bypass the station on the middle tracks ("bypass express tracks") (D N trains). Trains to or from the Montague Street Tunnel ( R train) stop across the platform from the respective outer track.

Stations with two levels

Some stations have two levels. The levels separate the platforms of different services and/or directions. For example:

Complete lists of stations

The complete list of stations is split by borough. The second column displays the number of stations as counted by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. The third column shows the number of stations when "station complexes" are considered to be one station each.

Station complexes

The New York City Subway has several types of transfer stations, among them station complexes (i.e. sets of two or more stations connected with a passageway inside fare control) and stations serving two or more lines (considered to be one station each). The table below only lists the station complexes. For a more detailed list see the main article.

Stations with the same name

There are many stations that share the same name. These stations are disambiguated by the line each of them is on. The following list shows these occurrences presented alphabetically by borough, then west to east, then north to south; stations of the same name that form a subway complex are grouped in parentheses (); demolished and permanently closed stations are stricken through; future stations are in italics:

Top stations by ridership

These tables list the top ten New York City Subway stations by annual, average weekday, and average weekend ridership in 2015.