Zohran Mamdani wants to make NYC buses free as mayor. How would that work?

In a crowded Democratic primary field looking to replace New York City Mayor Eric Adams, Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani is making a populist pitch that could earn him a shot at the title of “bus mayor.”

Mamdani, a democratic socialist with an impressive campaign cash haul, is promising to make New York City buses free. The proposal continues his work on the issue in the state Legislature, where he and state Sen. Michael Gianaris were the architects of a free bus pilot program. It is also a part of a suite of campaign proposals related to affordability, the overarching theme dominating the race so far.

“To the extent that elected officials want to do things that are easily understood and popular, there are few things that match free bus service in that,” said Danny Pearlstein, policy and communications director at the transit advocacy group Riders Alliance. 

But there are snags: It would be an additional expense – possibly more than $700 million – for an already cash-strapped Metropolitan Transportation Authority. The mayor of New York City also doesn’t have direct control over the MTA, a state agency. Mamdani has not yet put forth a specific proposal on where the funding would come from, but has said that the city would have a role in paying for it, and has pointed to unpaid landlord fines as one potential source of revenue. 

The successful pilot

Mamdani’s bus proposal sets him apart from his opponents, some of whom have suggested tackling transit affordability by expanding Fair Fares, the existing program that provides discounted fares to low-income New Yorkers. In pitching his proposal, Mamdani has highlighted the results of the one-year pilot of free buses, which saw fares removed from one bus route in each borough. Among other takeaways, a report by the MTA found that the pilot led to average ridership increases of 30% on weekdays and 38% on weekends. Roughly 12% of riders were new to the routes, and they were more likely to ride for leisure and errands than for trips to school or work.

Advocates have noted that the results from the pilot are strong, including higher ridership, reduced assaults on drivers, and little effect on fare evasion on nearby routes. The pilot evaluation, however, also showed slightly longer wait times.

“We actually were able to have a far greater economic impact on the very New Yorkers that we are currently failing to capture through means-tested programs such as Fair Fares,” Mamdani said of the pilot. “When someone is earning that little on an annual basis, you need to make it as easy as possible for them to access relief, not ask them to step through a bureaucracy much like the one that has already failed them many a time over.”

The pilot program showed that bus operators’ jobs become safer when fare collection isn’t a part of their work. Physical and verbal attacks on bus operators decreased nearly 40% on the free routes during the pilot. “There’s a direct connection between the collection of revenue and assaults against transit operating staff, and for that reason alone, we would wholeheartedly support any and all of these efforts,” said Transport Workers United International President John Samuelsen. “And the MTA should learn from that data.”

Paying for it

The MTA is effectively run by the governor, and, under its current management, has thrown cold water on the idea of expanding free buses. Still, the mayor has appointees to the board of the MTA and an undeniable bully pulpit from which to advocate for transit priorities for the city. The city has leverage in controlling its own streets, for example, if not the buses that run on them. 

The cost of eliminating fares from all city buses would likely be north of $700 million – an MTA analysis from 2022 put the cost for fiscal year 2026 at $778 million, Mamdani’s campaign said. A separate analysis on free local bus service from the city Independent Budget Office incorporated savings that fare-free bus rides would produce, including on fare enforcement and collection costs, totaling $33 million per year. They found the total cost would be $652 million.

Mamdani’s campaign hasn’t put forward a specific proposal for what portion of responsibility the city would bear for the cost and what portion the state would bear, or committed to a source of funding. One idea the campaign has floated is tapping the large trove of unpaid fines in the city – namely the more than $800 million in unpaid fines on landlords for code violations – to help come up with the revenue. But the proposal would need a stable source of recurring revenue to last. “We’re going to be announcing new policies soon on beefing up code enforcement, not only to better protect tenants but also so the city can actually collect what it’s owed. But that’s certainly not the only path to funding free buses,” Mamdani campaign spokesperson Andrew Epstein said. 

Gianaris said he’s still looking to push for expansion of free buses in the state budget this year, and both houses of the Legislature have proposed extending the pilot. As for a source of state funding, he has consistently pointed to raising taxes on the wealthy to help fund the MTA. Gianaris, however, admitted of Gov. Kathy Hochul’s position on raising taxes, “It’s not her preference. We’ll see as the budget rolls forward.”

In conversations with MTA Chair Janno Lieber, the concern Gianaris said he routinely heard was how free buses would be paid for. “He always told us, if you guys are paying for it, I’ll happily implement it. So for the pilot program, we funded it and he implemented it,” Gianaris said. “I think his concern is, we tell him to make it free, but don't tell him how we're going to pay for making it free, and then he’s got a hole to deal with. So if we could work together to answer that question, I think he’d be more amenable to it.” 

One possible side-effect if implemented on a larger scale: Free buses could drive some riders away from the subway, causing a loss of subway revenue on top of lost bus revenue. The 2023 IBO report suggested that such an effect wouldn’t be huge, citing an MTA estimate that between 2% and 4% of subway trips would switch to bus trips under free bus service. Mamdani said that he envisions a gradual rollout of free buses.

Pearlstein said that Riders Alliance sees the merits of Mamdani’s case but has not taken an official stance on the proposal yet. If there are hesitations based in policy, he said, they come in opportunity cost – spending on other priorities, for example – as well as in not wanting to see unintended consequences, like possible disinvestment in the quality of service. “We don’t want to be in a situation where the political capital, in fact, dries up because there's more funding,” he said. “This perverse argument says, ‘Well, the bus is free. Who cares whether it gets where it’s going on time?’ And that’s not fair to anyone who needs to be somewhere on time, which is almost everyone.”

Mamdani also wants to make buses faster, including by expanding priority lanes, bus queue jump signaling and loading zones.