A New Jersey man won a new T-shirt, an eyeglass cleaning cloth imprinted with a subway map and a $100 OMNY card when he had the good luck Tuesday of being named the subways’ billionth customer of 2023.
It wasn’t as good as winning a Powerball or Mega Millions jackpot — but Brian Jones of Teaneck was pleased nonetheless when an MTA station agent pulled him aside at the 175th St. A train station in Washington Heights at 11 a.m.
“I was just on my way to a meeting, and they grabbed me as I was walking through the turnstile,” Jones told reporters from a podium set up in the station mezzanine.
“I didn’t wake up knowing I would be the one-billionth customer, but life is full of surprises,” he said with a smile. “This is one of them.”
Besides the OMNY card, the T-shirt and the cleaning cloth, Jones was also given the sign used at the podium at the news conference the MTA held to herald his journey to work Tuesday: “One Billion subway rides in 2023.”
“A keepsake, for your office or your home,” said MTA chief customer office Shanifah Rieara.
MTA officials declared the billionth ride a sign of the subway system’s continuing recovery from the ridership nadir of the pandemic.
“It’s a milestone that we reached in late December last year,” NYC Transit president Rich Davey said.
“It’s almost six weeks earlier today,” he said. “Customers are coming back.”
Jones counted himself among them.
“This has kind of been a reintroduction to the subway for me,” he said Tuesday. “[I] just took a new [job] here in New York — I had been working virtually for the last three years.”
Ridership numbers are still down significantly from pre-pandemic numbers, however.
In 2019, people rode the subway nearly 1.7 billion times.
The MTA’s financial projections count on ridership reaching 80% of that number — or 1.4 billion riders — by 2027.
In a report last month, state comptroller Tom DiNapoli warned that the agency stands to lose $325 million per year for every 5% drop in ridership.
