How many subway stations does New York City have?

How to get close to this number

Divide track length by station spacing. The explanation gives around six hundred and sixty-five miles of track, and urban stations sit roughly a kilometre apart on average. That division gives a station count in the hundreds, and it puts this system at the top of the world list.

The twenty-four-hour operation is the genuinely unusual feature. Almost every metro in the world closes overnight to allow maintenance on the track; this one runs continuously because it was built with enough parallel track to divert trains around work. The station count and the operating hours are both consequences of the same over-building.

The ridership figure is the one that complicates the ranking: around three and a half million weekday journeys, still below pre-2020 levels. The largest network by stations is not the busiest by riders — this site's Tokyo question shows a system carrying ten times as many journeys. Network size and network use are different rankings entirely.