Which New York City mayoral candidate will earn the ‘bus mayor’ jacket?

New York City may not control its public transit system, but candidates for mayor made the argument that there’s plenty for the city to do to make the system work better. A half-dozen candidates in the ever-expanding, increasingly male New York City mayoral race weighed in on transportation issues at Monday’s forum hosted by the advocacy group Riders Alliance. 

Squeezed in between fundraisers and media availabilities – not to mention the inconvenient matter of their day jobs – these kinds of policy and advocacy group-driven candidate forums will take up many evenings and weekends for mayoral candidates over the next seven months. Those in attendance included New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, former city Comptroller Scott Stringer, state Sens. Jessica Ramos and Zellnor Myrie, Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani and attorney Jim Walden. Notably missing was Mayor Eric Adams, who also skipped the first forum of the cycle in late October.

Over the past year, as candidates have slowly launched their campaigns, they’ve largely targeted their ire on Adams. And at Monday’s forum, they criticized the mayor for not defending congestion pricing ferociously enough and abandoning bus lane projects, including on Fordham Road. “This administration has been a roving crime scene. It’s been pay-to-play all the way,” Stringer said. Several said they’d actually earn the “bus mayor” jacket that Riders Alliance once gifted Adams (which they’ve since asked him to return.)  But at a couple points during the discussion, fault lines between the challengers to Adams came into view, even if the candidates broached them a bit more delicately than they did their issues with the incumbent.

Stringer openly disagreed with one of Mamdani’s signature campaign proposals: making buses free. Though it’s not totally clear how Mamdani would achieve that if elected – he has referenced a potential funding partnership between the city and state – it’s an idea that was piloted earlier this year on one line in each borough. Mamdani has said that expanding free buses would increase ridership and make trips safer for drivers. But Stringer argued that those who can easily pay the fare shouldn’t get a free ride. Arguing instead for targeted affordability through improving the Fair Fares program and ensuring eligible riders are accessing it, Stringer said that the “people on Wall Street” have to pay up. Well-to-do turnstile jumpers on the subway annoy him too, he said. “When you have half a million dollars and you can’t respect the working people of this city, as mayor, you’re going to have a problem with me,” Stringer said.

And when the topic of special interest groups opposing transit projects came up, Lander took a gentle jab at Walden, who represented opponents of a bike lane project over a decade ago. “We were on the opposite sides of the Prospect Park West bike lane, where powerful interests were trying to get rid of it,” Lander said, to some applause.

In a lightning round at the end of the forum, additional cracks between the candidates appeared. Walden disagreed with the other five candidates when asked if the National Guard should be deployed in subways – he said yes, while the others said no. And asked whether New York City should get rid of parking placards for all those without disabilities, Ramos and Myrie were the only two to say no.

The impending implementation of congestion pricing is another area that the city doesn’t have direct control over, though that didn’t stop candidates from articulating their priorities in supporting its implementation, from building public trust and transparency into the system to conducting enforcement.

At the very least, Myrie said, he would be a more vocal champion of the program than Adams, who he noted didn’t comment on the pause of congestion pricing earlier this year for a couple days. “At minimum, I’d be prepared to defend congestion pricing, regardless of who is president of this country,” Myrie said.