cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/47472940
Feb. 13, 2026
Free buses? Really? Of all the promises that Zohran Mamdani made during his New York City mayoral campaign, that one struck some skeptics as the most frivolous leftist fantasy. Unlike housing, groceries and child care, which weigh heavily on New Yorkers’ finances, a bus ride is just a few bucks. Is it really worth the huge effort to spare people that tiny outlay?
It is. Far beyond just saving riders money, free buses deliver a cascade of benefits, from easing traffic to promoting public safety. Just look at Boston; Chapel Hill, N.C.; Richmond, Va.; Kansas City, Mo.; and even New York itself, all of which have tried it to excellent effect. And it doesn’t have to be costly — in fact, it can come out just about even.
If free buses strike you as wasteful, you’re not alone. Plenty of the beneficiaries would be people who can afford to pay. Does it make sense to give them a freebie? Yes, if it improves the life of the city, just as free parks, libraries and public schools do. Don’t think of it as a giveaway to the undeserving. Think of it as a gift to all New Yorkers in every community. We deserve it.
The way I understand it, free buses are not a cost-effective way to get people to stop driving. You get a better effect by using the same money for more routes and higher frequencies.
As a social policy, though, it might have something to it.
I wonder if “the same money” just means the fares themselves? Because there are all the other major costs mentioned in the article: police enforcement, legal costs to prosecute, and further junk prosecutions over fare jumpers (and others) missing court dates because they can’t afford to get to them. There’s also the reduction in driver assaults by people desperate to get on the bus without fare, which surely carry a cost to the city (in addition to how terrible it is). And, we can probably assume, there’s a cost savings in maintenance of payment systems and equipment on every bus. When you factor all that money in, plus as you say, the benefits as a social policy, I wonder how free fares really stack up against routes and frequencies—but in a perfectly world we’d want both!
I see a lot of places with great mass transit only use token fares, in Georgia its like 5 cents, in China for many cities its 15-30.
Essentially free, but you maintain ticket infrastructure so you can track which routes need to be expanded and where you can run fewer buses.
China does have great public transit, and it’s cheap. BUT weirdly enough, several years ago they raised the subway/bus cost in some cities. Seems the subways/buses were too successful, so they raised prices to deal with congestion (and maybe budgets were down? dunno). Still super cheap fares, but for many people it was a significant amount.
I used to live in a place with free buses, you still had to get a card and tap on/off. Most likely so they could track which routes are popular.
It probably depends, but in my city (Tampa FL US) the frequency is by far the biggest problem. We live within easy walking distance of 5 different bus routes (on purpose) including one that goes directly to the uni my penultimate kid went to, the community college my youngest attends, my job, both jobs my youngest works, and my husband’s previous office. Without transfers. One bus. So basically we are the best served family in the whole city, right?
Two of those routes run hourly. The other three only every half hour. So it’s useless for work & school, if you have to be there on time.
This is a degradation of service, too - when I went to the same university, I lived by a bus route that went directly there, and ran every 15 minutes. Buses need to run every 15 minutes to be useful, even if the routes are good.
Paying is not so bad now with the tap to pay but free would streamline the whole affair for sure.