If you have ever stood on Utica Avenue watching a B46 crawl toward you slower than you could walk it, Mayor Zohran Mamdani has a plan for you. What he does not have, yet, is the free ride he spent a year promising.
On Wednesday, July 8, in Downtown Brooklyn, Mamdani stood alongside Governor Kathy Hochul, MTA Chair Janno Lieber and city Department of Transportation Commissioner Mike Flynn to unveil a plan called “Next Stop: Fast Buses, Better Service.” The city will spend a total of $882 million over five years to make the buses move, targeting a 20 percent speed increase on 50 priority corridors and shaving up to six minutes off a trip. “In New York City, time is money, and we are going to give New Yorkers some of that time back, six minutes to be precise,” Mamdani said.
New York runs the slowest buses in the country. City officials put the average city bus at 8 miles per hour. “For decade after decade, the working people of our city who rely on the bus have had their precious time treated with disdain,” Mamdani said, noting that the city’s buses carry more riders than the next four largest American bus systems combined and that many crawl at an average of five miles per hour. His own transit official, Diniece Mendes, put a number on the worst of it on the mayor’s “Talk with the People” livestream: the B46, which runs up Utica Avenue, averages about 2.3 miles per hour. You can walk that.
The plan revives Bus Rapid Transit, which means buses that run in lanes physically separated from other traffic and board from island platforms, mimicking a subway at street level. The first rapid corridor is Flatbush Avenue, set to open in 2030, with Utica Avenue, Northern Boulevard in Queens, Tremont in the Bronx and a Kensington-to-JFK route rounding out the five rapid routes. The MTA is buying 2,500 new buses and will implement all-door boarding in 2027, so you tap OMNY and get on through any door instead of filing past the driver. The city has 28 bus-lane projects going this year and is expanding camera enforcement, including cameras on the buses themselves that ticket drivers who sit in or block the lane, backed by NYPD daily enforcement on 20 bus routes.
Read the plan and one word is missing: free.
Mamdani did not campaign on faster buses alone. He ran, over and over, on buses that would be “fast and…freeeeeeee,” and the pitch to bus riders, the city’s lowest-income commuters, helped carry him to Gracie Mansion. Neither the 51-page plan nor any of the officials who spoke made mention in prepared remarks of eliminating fares on city buses. Asked about it, the mayor did not retreat. “I’ve been very clear with New Yorkers that my commitment is to make buses fast and free,” Mamdani said. “Today we stand together on how we deliver the fast.”
The reason the free half is missing was standing at the microphone with him. In New York, the mayor controls the streets, but the fare belongs to the state: the MTA is a state agency, and Hochul and Lieber run it. Both have publicly opposed free buses. So the two people who could actually zero out the fare box helped announce a plan that does not, then stood beside the mayor while he said the free part is still coming.
For now, what lower-income riders get instead of a free bus is a discount they have to sign up for. In June, the city and City Council agreed to expand Fair Fares, the city’s half-priced transit fare program, to New Yorkers earning 200 percent of the federal poverty level or less, reaching about 1.3 million New Yorkers who earn at that level. It is means-tested, half-price and opt-in: you have to apply, and participation has run at roughly one-third of those who qualify. The Citizens Budget Commission praised it as a way to help riders “at a fraction of the cost of free buses.” Half-price if you fill out the form is a different promise than free for everyone.
If you ride in central Brooklyn, two of the five rapid-bus corridors, Utica Avenue and Flatbush Avenue, run straight through your commute, and your slow B46 is on the priority list. You can read the state’s full announcement and the corridor list at the governor’s office and decide for yourself whether six faster minutes is the deal you voted for. The fast is funded and scheduled. The free is still a fight, and the people who can grant it spent Wednesday not saying its name.
Featured image: Office of the Mayor / MTA / NYC DOT
