New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani (D) has made the idea of free buses popular, and no doubt many hope the policy can help address problems like the high cost of living, traffic congestion and pollution from vehicles. Eliminating fares might help at the margins, as it has in some smaller cities around the country. But if the goal is to make mass transit better, focusing on prices is the wrong approach.
The core problem with the “free bus” mantra is basic economics: If people value a product, they will pay for it. Many American cities have public transit systems that are underutilized because driving is a better alternative. Public transit arrives infrequently, doesn’t bring riders close enough to their destination or is so unpleasant that potential riders pay more to avoid it.
Fare-free rides might be able to add enough value to draw some people into transit systems, but they only go so far. Even budget-conscious commuters might calculate that the extra price of travel in a car is worth the time saved every day.
Eliminating fares also come with downsides, as Kansas City experienced with its now-scuttled experiment with free buses. Bus systems that are starved of revenue inevitably fail to invest in maintaining their fleet, which means services degrade and routes become slower. Cities could offset the costs by imposing taxes or parking fees, but that requires perpetual buy-in from lawmakers who are usually reluctant to keep asking residents to pay more for services they don’t use. And, of course, there’s the problem of homeless people using free transit as temporary shelters.
Mamdani would find more success if he focused on making buses a more attractive option. That means extra bus lines and more frequent rides in areas not already served by the subway. It also means redesigning roads so more buses don’t result in more traffic jams.
Mamdani seems to understand this. During his campaign, he started emphasizing that he wanted to make the notoriously slow buses move faster, in addition to making them free. Why not fix the system before starving it of revenue? Grand political slogans are nothing compared to the power of making basic government infrastructure work.
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