(The following article by Thomas J. Lueck was posted on the New York Times website on August 24.)
NEW YORK — The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, using census data, said yesterday that ridership on its buses, subways and commuter trains had grown more rapidly than the population of the city and suburbs. It attributed the ridership gains to the introduction of the MetroCard in 1995, and the replacement of more than 2,800 subway and train cars since 2000. From 1995 to 2005, the authority said, ridership on city buses and subways grew by 36 percent, compared with a population gain in the city of 7 percent. In the suburbs, it said, a 14 percent increase in ridership on Metro-North and the Long Island Rail Road outpaced a suburban population gain of 6 percent.