New York City Subway
Metro · New York City · MTA New York City Transit
23 lines · 439 stations · 183 interchanges
Every line drawn through its stations. Tap a line in the legend to hide or show it.
Lines
S
Quick facts
- Operator
- MTA New York City Transit runs the subway.
- Payment
- Use OMNY by tapping a contactless card, phone wallet, wearable, or OMNY card at the turnstile.
- There is no exit tap on the subway. Use the same card or device all week if you want the fare cap to work cleanly.
- OMNYContactlessFare capping
- Airport links
- JFK and Newark use airport rail plus a subway, LIRR, or NJ Transit connection. LaGuardia has no rail station, so use the Q70 or another bus link.
- The subway is the city layer. The airport people-movers and commuter trains are separate pieces of the arrival puzzle.
- Airport linkRegional rail
- Network type
- Heavy metro with local, express, shuttle, elevated, open-cut, and underground sections.
- The system runs 24 hours, but late-night and weekend service changes are part of New York.
- MetroElevated rail24-hour service
- Useful visitor pattern
- Stay near a subway stop, then read local versus express before boarding.
- The right line matters, but the right stopping pattern matters just as much.
Mike’s notes
New York City is subway first. Taxis and rideshare have their place, but the train is usually the practical answer in Manhattan traffic and the only reasonable way to keep a five-borough city feeling usable.
How to pay
Tap in with OMNY at the turnstile. A contactless card, phone wallet, wearable, or OMNY card works. There is no tap out on the subway, so the main discipline is using the same card or device every time.
This matters for fare capping and transfers. A phone wallet can count as a different payment device from the physical card in your wallet, so do not casually switch between the two. If you are paying for someone else, they need their own tap.
What visitors get wrong
Express and local trains are the trick. A line color or letter is not enough information. Express trains skip stations, local trains stop everywhere, and some stations have separate platforms or tracks for each pattern.
The other New York rule is service changes. The subway runs all night, but nights and weekends are when maintenance work reshapes the map. Check a current app or the posted station notices before trusting a route from memory.
Airport logic
JFK is AirTrain plus either subway or LIRR. Newark is AirTrain plus NJ Transit. LaGuardia is still a bus connection, most commonly the Q70 to the subway or LIRR. The subway is part of those trips, but it is not the whole airport system.
Built environment notes
The subway explains New York's infrastructure age better than a museum label can. Some lines are tight old tunnels, some are elevated structures over avenue retail, some sit in open cuts, and the newer extension pieces feel like a different city. That variety is part of the point: the system is huge because the city grew by layering solutions instead of replacing them.
Short history
1904
The first subway opens
The original IRT subway opens between City Hall and 145th Street, giving Manhattan the north-south rapid transit spine the city still runs on.
1910s-1930s
Private networks become the city map
The IRT, BMT, and IND systems expand through Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx. That is why the subway still feels like several systems fused together.
1940
The subway is unified
The city takes over the private subway companies, but the old divisions remain visible in line letters, train sizes, station layouts, and transfer logic.
2015-2020s
New extension, new payment
The 7 train reaches Hudson Yards, Second Avenue Subway opens its first phase, and OMNY gradually replaces MetroCard as the everyday payment layer.