After a violent attack on New York City itself, it’s comforting to spin tales about how tough and resilient we are — that New Yorkers will get back on the subways as if nothing had happened. This “New York tough” story was true in the recent past, from 9/11 to the West Side bike-path attack that killed eight people in 2017. But we can’t count on it now. New Yorkers aren’t going to be there for a city that is failing them.

During New York’s COVID-induced meltdown, now in its third year, sage voices have told us that we shouldn’t worry about the city’s future because the city always bounces back. Didn’t people say no one would return to office towers after 9/11?

Well, no, they really didn’t say that because people did return to their Manhattan offices, immediately. We had no choice. Similarly, though we were nervous about packing into subways that could become mass-terror scenes, we had no choice about that, either.

This isn’t revisionist history. In 2001, subway ridership was up nearly 2% over 2000 levels, and in 2002, it rose again, by half a percent. Similarly, after that 2017 truck-terror attack on the Hudson River bike path and the car-terror attack in Times Square that killed one the same year, New York bounced right back.

This time is different. The age of terror that started with 9/11 was also the age of record-low violent crime in New York. Yes, people thought once in a while about being bombed on the subway or whether they were on a low-enough floor of an office building to jump out the window.

But these were background fears — and with murders going down almost every year, from 649 in 2001 to below 300 in 2017 and 2018, people didn’t worry about being pushed to death down the subway stairs or their kids being killed by “stray” bullets walking home from school.

For that matter, people riding the subways in the 1970s and ’80s had to worry about random muggings and stabbings, but they didn’t have to worry about mass ideological terror.

Now the anxiety load is double what it was back in 2019 and even in the ’80s. New Yorkers on a subway train or platform must worry that a random mentally ill person will shove or stab them. They must worry that a teen gang might rob them. And they must worry that someone else has spent his whole pandemic nursing his grievances and plotting a spectacular terror attack. 

Nor is the city coming together, as it once did, after such attacks. In the month after 9/11, New York murders fell 11%. By contrast, just hours after Brooklyn subway-shooting suspect wounded 29 people, “regular” criminals shot and killed three people in The Bronx (in three separate incidents) and wounded 13 in The Bronx and Brooklyn.

“Regular” violent subway crime bounced back immediately, too. About 17 hours after the Brooklyn mass attack, a suspect stabbed two men on a Harlem platform.

Violent subway crime is up 40% in the first two months of this year compared with 2019, despite ridership that rarely exceeds 60% of pre-COVID normal.

New Yorkers who have stayed away from the subways for 25 months are hardly going to flock back now. The only hope is a visible, respectful police presence that makes New Yorkers feel safer — and that results in immediate double-digit drops in everyday underground crime.

In the wake of the Brooklyn attack, Mayor Eric Adams said he would double the number of cops deployed on the subways. Done right, more cops engaged in more interactions with lawbreakers and people behaving suspiciously or erratically will address both problems: the everyday reality of robberies and assaults underground and the lower but real risk of targeted terror attacks.

And, hmmm, what’s this? After the attack, our left-wing city comptroller, Brad Lander, gave “thanks of a grateful city” to — gasp — “NYPD officers.” He even said that he was glad the suspect had been arrested!

Let’s hope that state lawmakers have similar epiphanies: People engaged in violence belong behind bars.

The alleged shooter targeted the subways likely because he understands how important they are to New York City. With more than two million pre-COVID riders still avoiding the rails each day, New York City’s elected officials need to appreciate that fact, as well.

Nicole Gelinas is a contributing editor to the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal.