New York – New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani campaigned on three things: making fares free, universal daycare, and faster, free buses.
New Yorkers – apparently accustomed to slow buses – will have to wait for free buses.
Tight city and state budgets and disagreements among Democrats are blocking the mayor’s plan, and the mayor himself isn’t working hard enough to get it done this year.
Instead, the mayor is promoting a pilot program that Albany lawmakers are willing to pay for.
“We are encouraged by the conversations we are having with the governor and legislative leaders to take action as a first step in 2026,” Mamdani said in an interview with POLITICO on Tuesday.
The comment is an acknowledgment of what was becoming clear in Albany and City Hall: There will be a wait for free buses.
The mayor said he is “fully committed to making buses faster and free.”
The mayor is able to promote a universal daycare pilot as his victory. But a bus pilot will again cover ground covered as a member of the Assembly in 2023, when he helped get funding in the budget to test a free bus route in each of the five boroughs. He touted the success of campaigning for free buses across the city. But internal disputes between Mamdani and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie over a housing deal in next year’s state budget led to the program ending in 2024 rather than being extended.
The budgets of both the state Assembly and Senate support affordable buses, although the Senate’s language is vaguer than the Assembly’s, with one containing a dollar figure and the other containing firm language about the pilot.
Meanwhile, other Democrats are offering alternatives to Mamdani’s free bus plan.
City Council Speaker Julie Menin and Governor Kathy Hochul support expanding the rebate program for low-income subway and bus riders.
Proponents of the program, known as Fair Fairs, argue it could produce more results. Help those who need it most Because it also includes metro ride. State lawmakers may also like it because it is currently funded by the city.
But Mamdani never became fully involved.
While Mamdani has supported expansion of the program, he has a habitual hatred of income-based programs.
In 2024, he especially fair fare determined That is to say, “means-tested programs will never reach everyone for whom they are designed.” This political impulse is also reflected in the pilot program of universal free daycare Opening of free preschool In one of the wealthiest areas of the city.
The current version of Fair Fare offers fares at only half the price, serves about 400,000 people and costs about $96 million a year. Expanding eligibility and offering free rentals could cost about $150 million more — but that assumption depends on only half the people eligible actually signing up.
State Senator Jeremy Cooney, a Rochester Democrat who chairs the body’s Transportation Committee, said lawmakers want to do something to make transit more affordable, but “it is not financially feasible to make every bus in New York City free.”
“I would tell the mayor this: I know you care about the most vulnerable,” he said. “This is one way – working within the existing system – that we can increase support for the most vulnerable and start from there, and then look to expand that.”
Cooney also said there might be some room to help the city pay fair fares, but he would also tie it to more funding for upstate transportation systems.
There are also some indications that, given other issues facing the city, the mayor may have put the widespread rollout of free buses on the back burner for several weeks.
During a March City Council budget hearing, Council Majority Leader Shawn Abreu asked Janno Lieber, head of the state Metropolitan Transportation Authority, about the idea of running free buses during this summer’s World Cup.
“We’re not going to study things that aren’t on the agenda of the city and the state and other power players,” Lieber said. “No one has asked me to give free buses to people who are paying $1,000 a ticket from other countries. No one has asked me that yet.”
Similarly, Cooney said that Mamdani has asked him for some things, but he “did not directly ask” the mayor on free buses.
During MTA board meetings, city representatives from the transit agency are also not pushing for free buses.
Transit advocates seem to support both free buses and expanded fair fares.
Riders Alliance spokesperson Danny Pearlstein said, “Transit affordability is a big part of making New York more affordable and that’s the appeal of both free buses and the modified fare program that provides free and more affordable fares to more New Yorkers.”
Mamdani has also pledged to run buses at a faster speed. Lieber said the MTA is working with the city on this.
Jason Beeferman contributed to this report.
