Second Avenue Subway's debut leads to declining taxi use on the Upper East Side

Ever since the Second Avenue Subway got started in January this year, studies have been trickling out examining the impact of the extension. Earlier this week a report came out that said rents around the new stations hadn’t increased as much as industry experts had anticipated.

The latest report concerning the Second Avenue Subway has to do with another form of transportation—yellow cabs. A study published by New York University’s Rudin Center for Transportation has found that taxi use has declined by nearly 20 percent in certain parts of the Upper East Side since the subway service got underway.

While not all parts of the Upper East Side saw major declines, the areas that were previously most impacted due to the lack of a subway saw drops namely parts of Yorkville, and Lenox Hill. While the decline in drop-offs was higher near the 72nd Street station, pick-ups near all three newly-opened stations dropped by almost 20 percent.

Courtesy of NYU’s Rudin Center for Transportation

For the study, which was first reported on by DNAinfo, the Rudin Center analyzed data released by the city’s Taxi and Limousine Commission, and looked at numbers from one week in January 2016 (11-15) and compared them with numbers from the same timeframe in January 2017 (9-13).

The study does acknowledge that it hasn’t analyzed data from ride sharing services like Uber, so that may skew the perspective slightly, but there has inarguably been a decline in yellow cab usage.

Since the subway launched on January 1, ridership numbers have grown by 8,000 each week, according to the MTA, and when it last analyzed the data, the Second Avenue Subway had about 155,000 daily riders.

• Upper East Side Taxis and the Second Avenue Subway [NYU Rudin]
• Taxi Use Plummets on Upper East Side Due to 2nd Avenue Subway, Report Finds [DNAinfo]
• Second Avenue Subway ridership numbers prove the line's popularity [Curbed]