Officials Mark The Full Return Of Subway Service, Indoor Dining

ASTORIA, QUEENS — After more than a year of restrictions, MTA officials and New York City restaurateurs celebrated the return of 24-hour subway service and the full reopening of the city’s restaurants and bars in Astoria on Monday.

Before chowing down on spanakopita, pork souvlaki, and other traditional Greek fare at Astoria’s Taverna Kyclades, the officials and restaurateurs gathered in front of the nearby Astoria-Ditmars Blvd subway station to mark the full return of subway service and indoor dining for the first time since the start of the pandemic.

Governor Andrew Cuomo reinstated 24/7 subway service as of 2 a.m. on Monday, and lifted indoor dining restrictions and dropped the city’s mask mandate for fully vaccinated New Yorkers on Wednesday.

For many in the transportation and hospitality industries, the subway and restaurants share what Andrew Rigie, Executive Director of the NYC Hospitality Alliance, described as a “symbiotic relationship.”

“The fact of the matter is that the restaurant industry cannot recover, let alone function, without a robust and effective public transportation system in place,” he said in a press release, noting that both restaurant workers and customers depend on trains and buses to get to restaurants and bars — a point that Governor Cuomo faced backlash for when he dropped the city’s dining curfew before reinstating full subway service.

In an effort to bolster public transportation ridership, especially amid ongoing debates about subway safety, the press conference in Astoria served as part of the MTA’s #TakeTheTrain and #TakeTheBus campaign.

Adrian Skenderi, owner of Taverna Kyclades spoke at the press conference in a t-shirt emblazoned with the campaign’s ‘take the train’ slogan, calling the subway “our means of coming back to normal.”

He was joined by prominent restaurateurs, including Daniel Boulud and Melba Wilson, as well as Interim President of NYC Transit Sarah Feinberg, all of whom were decked out in the MTA’s campaign merch.

Queens Borough President Donovan Richards Jr., who commented on the reopenings in a news release, encouraged residents across the city to take mass transit to “one of our great Queens restaurants,” many of which he pointed out are within walking distance from Astoria’s subway stations.