Free Buses, Real Costs. Inside Mamdani’s Socialist Dream to Shakeup Transit for New Yorkers
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has made "fast and free buses" a defining promise of his administration, framing the proposal as both an affordability measure and a long-overdue fix for a bus system that advocates say has been neglected for decades. But his big swing seems poised to collide with the political realities of New York City.
Supporters argue fare-free buses would reduce conflict, improve safety, and offer immediate relief to riders who depend on buses the most. Skeptics, including on-air pundits and transit organizations, warn the idea risks creating a major funding gap for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) unless the city commits to a durable revenue stream and a clear operational plan.
New York City bus riders already face some of the slowest service in the nation despite carrying millions of passengers each day.
"We’re the biggest ridership, and yet we’re subject to the slowest buses. It’s a fundamental unfairness. It’s an embarrassment," Danny Pearlstein, policy and communications director at the Riders Alliance, told Fox News Digital during a bus ride through the Bronx.
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That history helps explain why Mamdani’s proposal has resonated politically. Pearlstein said bus riders, many of whom are students, seniors, and caregivers, are pressed for time and money just like drivers or subway commuters. Yet buses have long been deprioritized on New York City streets.
"That is why this administration’s call for fast and free buses resonates," he added.
Pearlstein's interview, among others, is part of Fox News Digital’s "The Rise of Socialism" series, which examines how socialist ideas and policies are increasingly shaping political debates and public policy in major cities across the United States.
Advocates point first to safety and reduced conflict. Multiple interviewees claimed that fare disputes are a persistent source of tension between riders and bus operators.
"When you eliminate fare payments on the buses, the friction between passengers and the drivers goes away," said Brian Fritsch, associate director of the Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee to the MTA (PCAC). "It does create a safer atmosphere for drivers. That has been a sore spot for a number of years."
Transit analyst Charles Komanoff, who modeled Mamdani’s free bus proposal, echoed that view, noting that altercations over fare payment have led to assaults on drivers in the past.
"Every year, there’s maybe a dozen cases in which a bus driver is assaulted," Komanoff said. "Presumably that would shrink or maybe disappear entirely if there was no expectation to pay the fare in the first place."
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Advocates also cite data from New York City’s most recent fare-free bus pilot, launched in late 2023 under a mandate from the state budget. The MTA selected one local route in each borough and suspended fares for nearly a year before restoring fare collection in September 2024.
According to the MTA’s evaluation, ridership increased on all five fare-free routes, with weekday ridership rising roughly 30 percent and weekend ridership climbing closer to 40 percent. However, the agency found that much of the increase came from existing riders taking more trips, rather than large numbers of new riders entering the system for the first time. The MTA estimated the nine-month pilot cost approximately $12 million in lost fare revenue and related expenses.
The fare-free pilot underscores the core argument in the free-transit debate: eliminating fares can boost ridership, but it also creates a measurable budget hole and does not automatically translate into dramatic "new" demand. Furthermore, money has to come from taxpayers, Albany, or cuts elsewhere if the policy is expanded.
Pearlstein said the pilot nonetheless demonstrated that free buses are both safer and more popular, even if they are not a silver bullet.
Beyond safety, supporters argue fare-free buses would meaningfully improve affordability, especially for low-income New Yorkers who rely on buses for short, essential trips.
"Most of the cost of bus operations is already paid for by public subsidies, not by fares," Pearlstein said. "We’re collecting several hundred million dollars at the fare box, compared to several billion already invested. What we’re replacing is an order of magnitude smaller than what we already raise from other sources."
Komanoff added that most new bus trips generated by free fares would not replace car travel but would instead allow people to make trips they currently forgo.
"We want people to have the basic right to the city," he said.
Supporters also say eliminating fares could modestly speed up buses by reducing boarding time and enabling all-door boarding.
In his own modeling, Komanoff estimated fare-free buses could improve speeds by roughly 7 to 12 percent. Not transformative, but meaningful for daily riders.
"That would be a material improvement in the lives of the two million New Yorkers a day who ride the buses," he said.
Still, even advocates acknowledge that speed and reliability matter more than price alone.
"Let’s be clear," Komanoff said. "Making the buses work better, having them be speedier, more reliable, more consistent, is probably more important than making them free. But I think we can do both."
The biggest obstacle to Mamdani’s plan is money.
"If there were to be a free bus program, there would need to be some additional revenue coming into the MTA," Fritsch said. "They obviously couldn’t just make cuts to make up that loss."
Bus fare revenue is currently used to back long-term MTA bonds, meaning eliminating fares would require restructuring existing financing, not just replacing annual operating dollars.
PCAC has identified more than 20 potential revenue sources that could theoretically fund fare-free buses, but Fritsch said the challenge is political will, as well as coordination between the city and the MTA.
"The mayor has initiatives, the MTA is a state agency," he said. "They need to meet somewhere in the middle."
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Komanoff argued that New York City taxpayers, rather than suburban commuters or the MTA itself, should shoulder the cost, estimating the annual price tag at roughly $800 million.
"That’s not chump change," he said. "But it’s not a game changer for the city’s finances either."
Mamdani, who identifies as a democratic socialist, has framed the funding question through that ideological lens, arguing that essential services should be broadly accessible and financed through higher taxes on corporations and top earners. His platform repeatedly emphasizes redistributive policies and expanding the public role in everyday costs of living, positioning fare-free buses as a public good rather than a market transaction.
Critics say that philosophy underestimates operational constraints.
Charlton D’Souza, the founding president of Passengers United and a southeast Queens native, worries fare-free buses could create unrealistic expectations for a system already struggling with staffing shortages, aging equipment, and uneven service.
"We don’t have enough bus drivers. Trips are not getting filled," D'Souza said. "If you make the buses free, people are going to expect a service."
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He also raised concerns about accountability and long-term budget stability, pointing to past service cuts during economic downturns.
"I lived through the 2008 budget cuts," D’Souza continued. "They cut bus routes; they cut subway lines. When elected officials talk, they don’t always understand the operational dynamics."
There is also skepticism about who may benefit from the free bus proposal. Some argue universal free fares would subsidize riders who can already afford to pay, while diverting resources from targeted programs.
"If somebody’s making $100,000 or $200,000 and they’re getting a free ride, how is that equitable?" D’Souza said, suggesting expansion of the city’s Fair Fares program instead.
Free bus service is also viewed by critics as emblematic of a broader ideological shift toward democratic socialism, in which services traditionally supported by user fees are instead treated as universal public goods. Eliminating fares severs the direct relationship between usage and payment, shifting the full cost of transit onto taxpayers and expanding the role of government in everyday economic life.
Supporters see that shift as a moral corrective to inequality, but skeptics argue it reflects a socialist governing philosophy that favors redistribution over market pricing and risks normalizing permanent public subsidies.
Despite the concerns, even cautious observers say Mamdani’s proposal has shifted the conversation.
"I liked his positivity, his can-do attitude," Komanoff said, recalling first encountering Mamdani years ago at a rally in favor of congestion pricing. "He didn’t seem stuck in the usual parameters of politics."
Whether that optimism translates into policy will depend on whether the administration can secure stable funding, address operational constraints, and persuade Albany to cooperate.
For now, Mamdani’s free bus plan sits at the intersection of ambition and arithmetic, popular with riders, plausible to advocates, but still facing a long list of fiscal and logistical hurdles.
As Fritsch put it: "There’s no shortage of ideas. The question is where exactly the money comes from and who actually has the political courage to make it happen."
Fox News Digital's Nikos DeGruccio contributed to this report.