The City Council on Tuesday announced the largest ever expansion of New York’s discounted public transit program for low-income residents, part of a budget agreement with Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who has been reluctant to widen the program as he pushes to make buses entirely free.
The program, Fair Fares, will now provide half-price bus, subway and paratransit rides to New Yorkers who earn up to 200 percent of the federal poverty level — about $32,000 a year for an individual or $66,000 for a family of four.
Previously, the program accepted only riders making up to 150 percent of that threshold — about $49,000 for a family of four — leaving out a vast majority of lower-income workers, including those making the city’s minimum wage of $17 an hour.
In all, the expansion increases the number of people who qualify for the discount to 1.3 million, up from roughly 960,000.
The changes, expected to take effect later this year, are projected to raise the annual cost of the program to $175 million from about $100 million. (The size of the increase is partly attributable to the higher income threshold, under which more workers who regularly use public transit are expected to enroll in the program.)
“Everyone deserves affordable access to our public transit system, one of our city’s greatest assets, but a $3 subway or bus fare is simply too high for many working New Yorkers,” the City Council speaker, Julie Menin, said in a statement.
“We will continue working to strengthen the program and improve transit access for all New Yorkers,” she added.
Shaun Abreu, the Council’s majority leader and transportation committee chair, praised the expansion and said it would help discourage fare evasion, which has been a widespread issue on buses.
Still, the City Council did not pass amendments to the program that would have automatically enrolled the lowest-income New Yorkers and made their bus, subway and paratransit rides free. Ms. Menin had endorsed those ideas in May.
Jack Lobel, a spokesman for the speaker, said the Council was still considering those changes.
Mr. Mamdani has not made the Fair Fares program a priority, opting instead to pursue his campaign promise to end bus fares for all riders. His preliminary budget proposal did not include additional funding for a Fair Fares expansion.
At a news conference on Tuesday morning, Mr. Mamdani said that he supported raising the income threshold for the transit discount but that the expansion did not mean he would abandon his plans to make buses both faster and entirely free. He called those goals part of his long-term vision.
“We can believe and fight for all of these things at the same time,” he said.
Transportation experts are split on whether the cost of fully subsidizing the bus service would be worth the investment when the city is trying to narrow a multibillion-dollar budget deficit. Some also argue that making only buses free makes little sense, because many bus riders transfer to subways, where they would have to pay a fare anyway.
More than four million people ride the subway on an average weekday, while about 2.5 million people take the bus.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the state agency that runs the subway and buses, has said making buses free could cost more than $1 billion a year, far more than broadening Fair Fares. Mr. Mamdani has said the cost would be closer to $700 million a year.
Transit advocates have sought an expansion of Fair Fares’ eligibility criteria for years, as the cost of living in the city continues to rise.
About one in five New Yorkers struggle to pay for public transit, a burden disproportionately borne by Black and Latino commuters and working mothers, according to a 2024 report from the Community Service Society of New York, an economic justice group.
Danny Pearlstein, the policy director for Riders Alliance, a transportation policy nonprofit that supports Fair Fares, said raising the program’s income threshold was necessary to benefit some of the city’s lowest-paid but most vital employees, including home health aides and child care workers.
“It’s a huge benefit to them, and it makes the city more affordable,” he said.
Mr. Mamdani has been critical of so-called means-tested programs like Fair Fares, because they can require a lengthy and challenging application process that limits the number of beneficiaries. He has argued that making the service free for all, including those who can afford it, is a better way to help lower-income New Yorkers.
When the city enacted the program in 2019, residents qualified if they were between the ages of 18 and 64 and had a household income up to 100 percent of the federal poverty level. The plan costs about $90 million a year, less than it is funded for, partly because only about 40 percent of those who qualify are enrolled, according to the city’s Independent Budget Office.
Dana Rubinstein contributed reporting.
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