Zohran Mamdani’s Transit Vision

Beyond Free Fares Zohran Mamdani's Transit Vision and the Complex Reality of NYC's Bus Crisis ()

Beyond Free Fares: Zohran Mamdani’s Transit Vision and the Complex Reality of NYC’s Bus Crisis

A Comprehensive Policy Analysis of Fare-Free Transit, System Performance, and Transit Equity

The election of Zohran Mamdani as New York City’s Democratic mayoral nominee has thrust public transportation–specifically, his flagship proposal to eliminate bus fares–into the center of policy debate. As the 33-year-old democratic socialist assemblymember transitions from Albany to potentially running America’s largest city, his promise of fare-free buses represents more than a populist gesture. It crystallizes fundamental questions about transit equity, system performance, fiscal sustainability, and the relationship between accessibility and urban mobility that have long plagued the nation’s largest transit system.

This analysis examines Mamdani’s transit agenda through multiple lenses: the feasibility and cost implications of fare elimination, the underlying crisis of bus performance that makes the proposal resonate, the broader context of MTA’s fiscal challenges, comparative evidence from fare-free systems worldwide, and alternative approaches to achieving transit equity and improved service. What emerges is a portrait of a transit system in crisis–and a policy proposal that, while well-intentioned, may not address the fundamental problems riders actually face.

The Mamdani Proposal: Origins, Scope, and Political Context

Mamdani’s commitment to fare-free buses did not emerge in a political vacuum. As a New York State Assemblymember representing Astoria and parts of northwest Queens, he successfully championed $15 million in state funding for a pilot program that eliminated fares on five bus routes–one in each borough–between 2023 and 2024. The pilot represented the first fare-free bus service in New York City history and provided Mamdani with empirical ammunition for his mayoral campaign.

The MTA’s evaluation of the pilot found ridership increases of 30% on weekdays and 38% on weekends across the five routes. Approximately 12% of riders were new to the routes, with these new passengers more likely to use buses for leisure and errands rather than work or school commutes. These results, while modest in scale, suggested that eliminating fares could meaningfully expand access–particularly for non-work trips that enhance quality of life but which riders might otherwise forgo due to cost.

The proposal resonates with Mamdani’s broader ideological framework, which positions government intervention as essential to lowering the cost of living for working-class New Yorkers. His campaign website frames fare-free buses within a comprehensive affordability agenda including rent freezes, municipal grocery stores, and increased taxation of wealthy residents and corporations. For Mamdani, buses are not merely transportation infrastructure but instruments of economic justice–a way to redistribute resources and expand opportunity for the city’s most economically vulnerable residents.

The Price Tag: Fiscal Reality and Funding Mechanisms

The cost of eliminating fares citywide, however, presents formidable challenges. The MTA currently collects upward of $800 million in bus fares annually, though more recent projections suggest this figure may reach nearly $1 billion as ridership continues recovering from pandemic lows. MTA Chair and CEO Janno Lieber stated that bus revenue is expected to be closer to $1 billion a year in the next few years, complicating Mamdani’s earlier estimates.

A 2023 study by the city’s Independent Budget Office found that fare-free buses would likely cost at least $652 million a year, incorporating savings on fare enforcement and collection costs totaling $33 million annually. However, the actual cost could be substantially higher when accounting for necessary service expansions to accommodate increased ridership and potential fare evasion on subway lines as riders shift behavior.

Mamdani faces a critical governance challenge: the mayor of New York City does not directly control the MTA, a state-controlled authority effectively run by the Governor. While the mayor appoints several board members and controls city streets, implementing fare-free buses would require either convincing Governor Kathy Hochul and the state legislature to absorb the cost, or having New York City directly subsidize the MTA–an arrangement that would require state legislative approval.

Mamdani’s revenue plan includes raising the corporate tax rate to match New Jersey’s 11.5%, which his campaign claims would generate $5 billion, and implementing a flat 2% tax on New Yorkers earning more than $1 million annually. However, Hochul has already ruled out raising taxes on high-income residents, creating an immediate political impasse. Moreover, any tax increase requires state legislative approval, and the complexity of state-city fiscal relationships means that even if these revenues materialized, there is no guarantee they would be directed toward transit.

MTA’s Fiscal Crisis: A System Under Unprecedented Pressure

To understand the feasibility of Mamdani’s proposal, one must first grasp the precarious financial state of the MTA. The authority faces a confluence of challenges that make absorbing hundreds of millions in lost fare revenue extraordinarily difficult.

The MTA estimates budget gaps of $345 million in 2027, $354 million in 2028, and $428 million in 2029, even before considering fare elimination. The authority’s financial plan relies heavily on revenue streams outside its control, including FEMA reimbursements for COVID-19 expenses and casino licensing revenue. FEMA recently delayed reimbursements and has suggested it could cancel distribution of these funds altogether, which would open up $300 million in budget gaps this year.

The capital side presents equally daunting challenges. The MTA’s proposed 2025-2029 Capital Plan included $68.4 billion of investments, with only $35.0 billion in identified funding, leaving a $33.4 billion gap. The plan was vetoed in December 2024 by state legislative leaders specifically because of this funding shortfall. Nearly 95 percent of the capital plan supports “Rebuilding and Improving” the system–essential maintenance to prevent system deterioration rather than expansion projects.

Paid subway ridership was down 24% from 2019 levels as of July 2025, while paid bus ridership was down 42% compared to pre-pandemic levels. Although ridership is gradually recovering, the structural deficit remains. The authority had balanced its operating budget through 2026 by using non-recurring federal COVID relief funds, but these one-time resources cannot support ongoing operations indefinitely.

This fiscal context makes Mamdani’s proposal particularly challenging. For context, $800 million in annual bus fares is more than the $500 million that Manhattan’s congestion pricing program is projected to add to MTA’s coffers. Eliminating this revenue stream would require either finding equivalent new revenue sources or making corresponding cuts elsewhere in the system–potentially including service reductions on subway lines or deferred capital maintenance that would accelerate system deterioration.

The Real Crisis: Performance, Not Price

While Mamdani frames fare elimination as the solution to transit inequity, extensive data suggests that New York’s bus crisis is fundamentally about performance rather than price. In 2024, buses ran at an average of 8.17 mph citywide, with Manhattan buses the slowest at 6.29 mph. To put this in perspective, the average New York City Transit bus travels at 7.4 mph–slowest among the 17 largest bus companies in the nation.

This is not hyperbole designed to embarrass local officials. As the Riders Alliance memorably illustrated, New York’s buses travel slower than an Aldabra giant tortoise. The typical New York City bus spends only half its time in-motion, with another 21 percent spent at red lights and 22 percent at bus stops. These are not marginal inefficiencies but systemic failures that make buses an unreliable transportation option for time-sensitive trips like work commutes.

The average speed of buses in New York barely changed over 10 years, declining by 0.6% between 2015 and 2024. Despite mayoral promises spanning multiple administrations–including Mayor de Blasio’s 2018 commitment to increase bus speeds by 25%–meaningful improvement has remained elusive. Mayor Adams likewise campaigned on fixing the city’s buses but has delivered limited results.

The equity implications of this performance crisis are profound. More than one in three New York City bus riders spends an hour or more commuting, the longest commute time of any transportation mode. New Yorkers who rely on the bus are more likely than average to be foreign-born, low-income, and people of color, with the average New Yorker earning 37% more than the average bus-dependent resident.

Bus commuters in majority-Black districts spend an additional 70 minutes commuting every week than those in majority-white districts, and in the 10 City Council districts with the most bus commuters, there are 53% more Latino residents and 34% more Black residents, with commutes 14% longer but 14% fewer streets with bus lanes. This is the structural racism of transportation infrastructure: communities of color systematically receive worse service despite higher dependence on buses.

What Riders Actually Want: Evidence vs. Political Narrative

Crucially, extensive research suggests that for most riders, fare elimination is not the primary concern. Kassandra Juarez, who rides the bus daily from the East Bronx to Manhattan, stated that fare “isn’t her main concern with the buses,” with her biggest problem being that they “take forever to come” and when they do, they’re “often crowded and sometimes a little dirty”.

Low-income riders, whom fare-free programs are supposed to benefit most, tend to prioritize frequency and safety over reduced fares. This finding is supported by transportation equity research showing that communities most dependent on buses consistently advocate for faster, more reliable service rather than eliminating the $2.90 fare.

The pilot program’s own data reinforces this point. During the pilot, 23 percent of riders reported riding the bus “because it was free,” while 45 percent of free-bus riders said they would have walked or not made the trip if it weren’t free. This suggests that fare elimination primarily induces discretionary trips rather than enabling essential transportation for those who genuinely cannot afford current fares.

Moreover, average route speeds fell slightly during New York’s fare-free bus pilot, owing to a 30 percent increase in weekday ridership. While fare advocates argue that all-door boarding would speed buses, the MTA never implemented this systemwide during the pilot, and the reality is that more riders means more crowding and longer dwell times at stops–particularly without corresponding service expansion.

The phenomenon of fare evasion further complicates the narrative that fares are the primary barrier. Roughly half of riders currently beat the fare, meaning that for a substantial portion of passengers, buses are effectively already free. The equity question thus becomes more nuanced: should limited resources be devoted to eliminating a cost that many riders already avoid, or to improving service quality for all passengers?

The Union Dimension: Worker Safety as Fare Policy

One of the most compelling arguments for fare elimination comes from an unexpected quarter: transit worker unions. John Samuelsen, international president of the Transport Workers Union, strongly supports Mamdani’s proposal because it “nearly totally eliminates the assaults on bus operators,” noting that “bus operators have been plagued with assaults”.

MTA data shows that since 2019, instances of harassment and assault against bus operators account for 63% of all workplace violence against transit workers, and so far this year, violence against bus workers makes up 45% of the total. This is not an abstract policy consideration but a matter of worker safety and dignity. Bus operators routinely face confrontations over fares, with some disputes escalating to physical violence.

From this perspective, fare elimination represents a workplace safety intervention rather than merely an affordability policy. Samuelsen praised what he called the “policy gravitas” of Mamdani, who sources said was heavily engaged in Albany steering the MTA away from a potential fiscal cliff, suggesting that union support reflects both safety concerns and confidence in Mamdani’s ability to navigate complex transit politics.

However, this argument must be weighed against alternative approaches to worker safety, including enhanced security presence, fare enforcement technologies that reduce operator-passenger confrontations, and policies that address underlying causes of transit violence. The question becomes whether eliminating hundreds of millions in revenue is the most cost-effective way to protect workers, or whether targeted interventions could achieve similar safety improvements while preserving funding for service improvements.

International and Domestic Precedents: Lessons from Fare-Free Systems

Mamdani’s proposal exists within a broader global context of fare-free transit experimentation. Understanding outcomes elsewhere provides essential perspective on likely impacts in New York.

More than 100 cities worldwide have made public transit free, mostly in Europe, with implementations ranging from small communities of around 10,000 residents to counties of over 100,000 residents. Tallinn, Estonia, the world’s largest fare-free city with 420,000 residents, eliminated fares in 2013. Kansas City, Missouri, became the first major U.S. city to offer system-wide free transit in 2019.

Research on these systems reveals complex outcomes. Studies using panel data regression models found that fare-free transit significantly increases ridership but neither significantly increases labor force participation rate nor reduces income inequality in small and medium-sized urban areas. This suggests that while fare elimination expands access, it does not automatically translate into broader economic opportunity.

Research on fare-free transit in Tallinn and other contexts found that ridership increases were concentrated among those living within one kilometer of subway stations, with zero effect for those living farther away. This highlights a critical point: fare elimination cannot overcome poor service quality, infrequent routes, or inadequate geographic coverage. If buses don’t serve your neighborhood reliably, making them free doesn’t solve the fundamental access problem.

A randomized controlled trial in King County, Washington, enrolled 1,797 low-income participants and provided treatment group members with six months of free transit. While the study found increased transit usage, it revealed limited evidence of impacts on employment, public assistance receipt, finances, criminal justice contact, or health outcomes. The research suggested that removing fare barriers alone is insufficient to drive transformative social outcomes without addressing broader systemic challenges.

Particularly relevant to New York is the experience of smaller U.S. cities. In Olympia, Washington, Intercity Transit found it was spending more to collect fares than it was receiving in fare revenue, making fare elimination financially rational. However, New York’s situation is categorically different: the MTA collects hundreds of millions in annual bus fares, and a whopping third of all U.S. transit riders are in the New York metropolitan area. The scale of ridership and revenue makes New York incomparable to municipalities where fare elimination might be administratively efficient.

Historical Warnings: NYC’s 1980s Free Transit Experiment

Perhaps most sobering for Mamdani’s proposal is New York’s own historical experience with fare-free transit. During the 1980s, the city experimented with free buses and trains during specific periods, and the results were decidedly mixed.

Contemporary reports described free buses and trains as “rolling parties,” with the absence of fare barriers attracting unruly crowds, leading to vandalism, broken windows, slashed seats, and littering. Crime rates spiked sharply during the free-fare period, with recorded incidents including 55 felonies and 29 arrests, compared to 33 felonies and 15 arrests the previous year.

Transit authorities were forced to deploy additional police units, incurring further operational costs, and reports cited “a lot of dirty buses” with increased trash collection, wear and tear, and mechanical strain. Even Carol Bellamy, former President of the City Council and an early supporter of the 1984 plan, later opposed making buses permanently fare-free, acknowledging the fiscal impracticality.

Critics of applying this historical example note that 1980s New York was dramatically different–higher crime rates, different policing strategies, and a transit system in far worse physical condition. Proponents of Mamdani’s plan might reasonably argue that contemporary New York, with different social conditions and more sophisticated transit management, would not necessarily replicate 1980s outcomes.

However, the historical precedent remains relevant as a caution about unintended consequences. Free buses could lead to “major safety issues,” particularly in increasingly extreme weather, where they might become “rolling homeless shelters,” with vagrants and drug addicts potentially camping out all day if there is free unlimited bus access. These concerns are not merely theoretical but grounded in observable patterns when public spaces lack entry barriers during periods of acute housing and substance abuse crises.

Alternative Pathways: Fare Reform Without Fare Elimination

If the goal is transit equity rather than fare elimination per se, multiple alternative approaches merit consideration–approaches that could improve affordability without sacrificing hundreds of millions in revenue desperately needed for service improvements.

Fair Fares Expansion: New York currently operates a Fair Fares program providing 50% discounts to low-income residents. The city’s Fiscal Year 2026 Executive Budget calls for expanding the city-funded Fair Fares program that offers half-off transit trips to low-income New Yorkers, though advocates are pushing for the applicant pool to increase further. Expanding eligibility to 200% of the federal poverty level and including CUNY students, as recommended by Comptroller Brad Lander, would target subsidies to those who most need them while preserving some fare revenue.

Full fare-free transit eliminates barriers and reduces administrative burdens for both riders and transit agencies, while partial fare-free transit focused in areas and on modes most used by minority and youth riders and riders with low incomes allows transit agencies to maintain a source of fare revenue. Means-tested approaches have their own challenges–application complexity, documentation requirements, and stigma–but they represent a middle ground between universal free transit and the status quo.

Service Quality Improvements: Mamdani understands that transportation affects job prospects, influences public health, and helps shape the cost of living, and many of his proposals beyond fare elimination are generally fantastic, including bus-mounted cameras to automatically ticket drivers who block bus lanes, replacing street parking with year-round outdoor dining, “daylighting” intersections to improve visibility, and using camera-based ticketing to keep bike lanes clear.

These interventions directly address the performance crisis. Bus lanes can speed up buses by 50% and move more than six times as many people as the same space devoted to car traffic, but just 2% of New York City streets have them. The 14th Street busway in Manhattan improved bus speeds by as much as 47% and increased ridership by 30%, demonstrating that infrastructure investment yields measurable improvements.

City Comptroller Brad Lander’s comprehensive bus performance report recommends expanding Select Bus Service routes, implementing transit signal priority to reduce red light delays, enforcing bus lane restrictions more aggressively, and setting performance-based targets to ensure accountability. These recommendations, if implemented with adequate funding, could transform rider experience more dramatically than fare elimination.

Network Redesign: Transit economist Eric Goldwyn called on the city to expand its subway system to divert demand from bus routes, proposing expanding the Second Avenue Subway to the west side of 125th Street and extending the subway to Fordham Road to divert demand from the Bx12. While subway expansion is extraordinarily expensive–the Second Avenue Subway Phase 1 cost $4.5 billion for three stations–strategic investments could relieve pressure on overloaded bus corridors.

Governance and Power: The Mayor’s Limited Transit Authority

An often-overlooked dimension of Mamdani’s proposal is the fundamental question of mayoral power over transit. The mayor of New York City does not have direct control over the MTA, a state agency, though the mayor has appointees to the board and an undeniable bully pulpit from which to advocate for transit priorities.

This governance structure creates both challenges and opportunities. A mayor committed to transit improvement can leverage control over city streets–including bus lane implementation, traffic signal timing, and parking enforcement–to meaningfully improve bus performance even without MTA cooperation. Conversely, even the most committed mayor cannot unilaterally eliminate fares or compel service expansion without state approval and funding.

Mamdani’s experience in the state legislature may prove valuable here. Sources said Mamdani was heavily engaged in Albany steering the MTA away from a potential fiscal cliff, suggesting he understands the complex state-city-MTA relationship and has working relationships with key legislative stakeholders. His ability to build political coalitions–demonstrated by securing the free bus pilot–may be his most important asset in implementing any transit agenda.

When asked about MTA concerns that costs may exceed projections, Mamdani responded that “when we were pushing for free buses in Albany, these were a lot of the same concerns that were raised at the time, and we won the first free buses in New York City history”. This suggests Mamdani views fare-free buses as a political organizing project as much as a policy proposal–a rallying point for building the coalition necessary to overcome institutional resistance.

Economic Development and Transit Dependency

The relationship between transit quality and economic opportunity deserves particular attention. Bus routes often fail to connect working people to emerging job centers across the city, particularly between boroughs. This spatial mismatch between residence and employment is especially acute for lower-income workers who cannot afford cars and for whom subway access is limited.

Fare-free transit has been used as a tool to achieve sustainability goals, reduce congestion, and reduce the cost of transportation across Europe, South America, and Asia. The theory is that by lowering transportation costs, fare elimination enables greater labor force participation, particularly for those whose effective wage after transportation costs makes employment economically marginal.

However, empirical research found that fare-free transit neither significantly increases labor force participation rate nor reduces income inequality in small and medium-sized urban areas. This suggests that transportation cost is not the binding constraint on employment for most potential workers. Rather, job availability, childcare access, skill mismatches, and other factors play larger roles in determining workforce participation.

The more compelling economic development argument focuses on time rather than money. If a low-wage worker faces a 90-minute bus commute each way due to slow, unreliable service, the time cost may exceed the monetary fare cost. Improving bus speeds from 7 mph to 10 mph–a 43% improvement that is achievable with dedicated lanes and signal priority–would save this commuter 20 minutes each way, or nearly three hours per week. Over a year, this represents 150 hours of time that could be devoted to additional work, education, family care, or leisure.

Climate and Sustainability Considerations

While Mamdani’s proposal is primarily framed around affordability and equity, it has significant climate implications. A car-free busway can move as many as 42 times more people per hour than a street for cars only, and while the Lincoln Tunnel’s car lane can only move 3,000 people per hour, its bus lane moves 30,000 people per hour.

The question is whether fare elimination effectively promotes mode shift from private vehicles to transit. In most cities, including Boston, the much-celebrated bump in ridership from fare-free programs has almost entirely consisted of prior transit users who take more trips, along with people shifting to the bus from walking or biking. This suggests limited climate benefit if fare elimination primarily induces additional trips by existing transit users rather than attracting car drivers.

The more effective climate strategy may be improving bus service quality to make it a genuinely competitive alternative to driving. New York’s geography and density mean that for many trips, buses could theoretically be faster than cars–if buses had dedicated lanes, signal priority, and reliable frequency. Currently, the average New York City bus travels at 7.4 mph, making it slower than biking or even brisk walking for many journeys. No fare policy can overcome this fundamental performance disadvantage in attracting discretionary riders who have other options.

The Path Forward: Integrated Transit Policy

The challenge facing Mamdani–or any mayor seeking to improve New York’s transit system–is not choosing between fare policy and service improvements, but rather how to strategically deploy limited resources to maximize rider benefit and system sustainability.

A comprehensive approach might include:

Targeted Fare Relief: Dramatically expand Fair Fares eligibility to 200-250% of federal poverty level, include CUNY students, and reduce express bus fares for discount program participants. This provides substantial relief to those who most need it while preserving revenue from affluent riders.
Bus Priority Infrastructure: Commit to building 150 miles of bus lanes as legally required by the Streets Master Plan, focusing on the slowest routes serving the most bus-dependent communities. Implement aggressive automated enforcement to prevent lane blocking.
Select Bus Service Expansion: Systematically convert high-ridership local bus routes to SBS with off-board fare payment, dedicated lanes, and transit signal priority. This combines speed improvements with fare collection efficiency.
State-City Fiscal Partnership: Negotiate with Albany for stable, multi-year operating and capital funding commitments that don’t depend on annual budget politics. In exchange, commit to measurable performance improvements and transparent cost reporting.
Network Redesign: Conduct borough-by-borough bus network redesigns to eliminate circuitous routes, improve frequency on trunk lines, and create meaningful crosstown and inter-borough connections.
Subway-Bus Integration: Expand subway access through targeted extensions in bus-dependent communities, reducing demand on overloaded bus routes while improving overall system connectivity.

The political challenge is that this comprehensive approach lacks the simplicity and emotional resonance of “free buses.” 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. A nuanced platform of means-tested subsidies, infrastructure investment, and institutional reform does not fit on a campaign poster.

Yet the evidence suggests that this more complex approach would deliver greater benefits to riders–particularly low-income riders and communities of color who depend most heavily on buses. Bus commuters in majority-Black districts spend an additional 70 minutes commuting every week than those in majority-white districts. For these riders, the priority is not free fares but functioning service.

Conclusion: Beyond Populism Toward Performance

Zohran Mamdani’s fare-free bus proposal represents a genuine attempt to address transit inequity and the crushing cost of living facing New York’s working class. His success in securing the pilot program demonstrates both political skill and policy commitment. The union support for his plan reflects real concerns about worker safety that deserve serious consideration.

However, the weight of evidence suggests that fare elimination, while superficially appealing, would not address the fundamental crisis of New York’s bus system: abysmal performance that makes buses an unreliable transportation option for time-sensitive trips. Should Mamdani somehow cobble together the hundreds of millions of dollars required annually, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority would have many superior uses for the money.

Those superior uses include dedicated bus lanes, transit signal priority, enforcement against bus lane blocking, network redesign, and subway expansion–infrastructure investments that would improve speed and reliability for all riders while supporting broader economic development and climate goals. Targeted fare subsidies for low-income riders could achieve equity goals while preserving revenue for these service improvements.

The challenge facing Mamdani as he potentially transitions to City Hall is whether he can move beyond the political appeal of fare elimination toward the harder, less visible work of actually fixing the buses. His record in Albany suggests he has the policy sophistication to understand these complexities. Mamdani seems to genuinely care about improving transportation for New Yorkers, and as mayor, he could leverage the city’s agencies to speed bus service.

The question is whether Mamdani will use his mandate to build a transit system that works–or one that is merely free. For New York’s 1.1 million daily bus riders, particularly those in Black and Latino communities who face the longest commutes and worst service, the answer matters enormously. They deserve buses that arrive on time, travel at reasonable speeds, and connect them efficiently to jobs, education, healthcare, and opportunity.

That vision–of a high-performing, equitable, sustainable transit system–requires honest confrontation with hard tradeoffs about resource allocation, governance reform, and political coalition building. It demands moving beyond the sloganeering of “free buses” to the unglamorous but essential work of institutional transformation. Whether Mamdani and his administration can make that transition will determine not just the success of his mayoralty, but the mobility and opportunity of millions of New Yorkers for decades to come.