List of New York City Subway services

As of November 2016^[update], the New York City Subway system has 25 lettered or numbered route designations.

Due to the subway operating 24 hours a day, there are five different service patterns. There are rush-hour, midday, evening, weekend and late night service patterns. Each service has a table in its article to show what tracks are used and when.

This table lists all the current services, along with their lines and terminals and a brief description; see Unused New York City Subway service labels for unused and defunct services.

The New York City Subway is one of the few subways worldwide operating 7 days a week, 24 hours a day, every day of the year. The schedule is divided into different periods of time, with each containing different operation patterns and train intervals.

The MTA defines time periods as follows; these are used in articles (sometimes abbreviated by numbers in superscript or the symbol indicated):

Other symbols are derivatives and are defined based on the rules above:

Lines with colors next to them are the primary trunk line of the corresponding service; they determine the color of the service bullets and diamonds, except shuttles which are dark gray.

local in Manhattan during weekends and late nights
via the Montague Street Tunnel late nights, fully local

A number of services operate shorter routes during lower ridership hours, but these are neither signed differently nor counted as separate services. Special services caused by General Orders or construction, usually during off-peak hours, are also not counted.

Because of inconsistencies in usage there are, in practice, more distinctly identifiable services operating simultaneously than are represented by the color/letter/number designations:

The schedule offers trains every 3 to 5 minutes on the most used sections during rush hours. During other traffic periods, intervals range usually from 4 to 12 minutes or up to 20 minutes on outer sections. During late nights, only selected express services are operated and all late night services usually run every 20 minutes.

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