The New York City Subway is a rapid transit system that serves four of the five boroughs of New York City, New York: the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Queens. Its operator is the New York City Transit Authority, which is itself controlled by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority of New York. In 2025, an average of 4.002 million passengers used the system on weekdays, making it the busiest rapid transit system in the United States and putting it among the 20 busiest in the world.

The present New York City Subway system is composed of three formerly separate systems that merged in 1940: the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT), the Brooklyn–Manhattan Transit Corporation (BMT), and the Independent Subway System (IND). The privately held IRT, founded in 1902, constructed and operated the first underground railway line in New York City. The opening of the first line on October 27, 1904, is commonly cited as the opening of the modern New York City Subway, although some elevated lines of the IRT and BMT that were initially incorporated into the New York City Subway system but then demolished predate this. The oldest sections of elevated lines still in operation were built in 1885. The BMT, founded in 1923 and also privately held, was formed from the bankruptcy of the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company. The IND was created by the City of New York in 1921 to be a municipally owned competitor of the two private companies. Unification in June 1940 by the New York City Board of Transportation brought the three systems under one operator. The New York City Transit Authority, created in 1953 to be a public benefit corporation that acquired the rapid transit and surface line (buses and streetcars) infrastructure of the Board of Transportation, remains the operator of the New York City Subway today.

The official count of stations is ; however, this tabulation classifies some transfer stations as two or more stations, which are called "station complexes" within the nomenclature of the New York City Subway. If station complexes are counted as one station each, the number of stations is . Thirty-two such station complexes exist. The reason for the higher count generally lies in the history of the New York City Subway: IRT, BMT and IND stations are usually counted separately, particularly if their lines are not parallel and are adjacent to or on another level to each other.

There are numerous New York City Subway stations that are closed, many of which stem from the demolition of elevated lines once operated by the IRT and the BMT that were made largely but not completely redundant to underground lines subsequently constructed.

The newest New York City Subway stations are part of the Second Avenue Subway, and are located on Second Avenue at 72nd, 86th and 96th streets. They opened on January 1, 2017.

Stations that share identical street names are disambiguated by the line name and/or the cross street each is associated with. For example, "125th Street station" can refer to four separate stations: 125th Street on the IND Eighth Avenue Line (), the IRT Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line (), the IRT Lenox Avenue Line (), and the IRT Lexington Avenue Line (). This situation occurs numerous times.

Station facilities and amenities

Of the stations in the system, 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).

Out of all the stations on the New York City Subway, 275 are fully underground (59%) 153 are elevated stations (32%) 29 are on an embankment (6%) 15 are open-cut stations (3%)

This means that 61% of the stations are below the surface (59% being fully underground and about 2% with most of the station below the surface). 39% of stations are above the surface or overground.

Entrances

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. They are manufactured in Tennessee by Cubic Corporation. Some of the waist-high turnstiles date to the late 20th century, when tokens were used to pay fares; as such, they still have token-return compartments. The waist-high turnstiles are vulnerable to a practice called "back-cocking", in which people entering the system can partially rotate the turnstile as if they were exiting, then slip through the side of the turnstile without paying.

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. As a precaution against fare evasion, two-fifths of the system's emergency exit doors had been retrofitted with delayed-opening devices , and security guards were staffed outside emergency exits. The delayed-opening devices, which prevent the door from opening until several seconds after the door is pushed, can be overridden by MTA staff in emergencies.

New turnstile designs were introduced in the 2020s. The MTA announced in 2021 that it would install wide-aisle fare gates for disabled passengers at five subway stations by mid-2022; the implementation of these fare gates was delayed by a year. Additionally, in an attempt to reduce fare evasion, the MTA exhibited several designs for half-height and full-height Plexiglas turnstiles in May 2023, which would replace the existing waist-high turnstiles. On December 4, 2023, the first wide aisle fare gates were installed at Sutphin Boulevard–Archer Avenue–JFK Airport station. Within two months, there was a slight increase in fare-paying riders at the station, although passengers were able to evade fares merely by leaning over the new turnstiles and activating the motion sensors. Following adjustments to the turnstiles, the MTA announced in May 2024 that the new turnstiles would be installed at fifteen stations by the end of that year, but the installation of the turnstiles was delayed. , the MTA planned to install the new turnstiles at 150 stations in four years.

The MTA has also tested out other features to prevent fare evasion. These have included low metal fins or "sleeves" on each arm of a turnstile, to dissuade potential fare evaders from squeezing through the gaps between the arms, as well as high spiked panels between separate turnstiles. In December 2025, the MTA announced that these features would be installed in almost every station.

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 always a full-time, 24/7 entrance and the presence of a 24 hour booth, typically located at the busiest entrance. Red means either a part-time booth or no booth, hence either exit-only or more and more often 24/7 entrance with MetroCard exclusively via HEETs. Older lamps are completely colored green or red. Newer ones, called "half-moons", have only the top half colored, while the bottom half is milky white; this is to provide more light. 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 1982 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). 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. A joke when the system was introduced was that "green meant go in, red meant don't. And yellow meant to take a cab." (NYC medallion taxis are yellow).

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 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 stored in a MetroCard. Each station has at least one booth open 24/7, 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.

Facilities and amenities

Air conditioning