From the 1970s to the 1990s, hundreds of subway entrances, largely in minority neighborhoods, were closed in order to reduce operating and maintenance costs, due to decreasing ridership, and fear of increasing crime. Despite the fact that crime has gone down dramatically, the cost of manning stations decreased following the introduction of MetroCard, and that ridership had rebounded prior to the Covid19 pandemic, the MTA has never gone back and evaluated whether reopening some of these entrances makes any sense as it had planned to. In recent years, the MTA has reopened a limited number of closed entrances, but these have mostly been in rich, whiter areas. At least 30% of stations have closed subway entrances.