Free buses sound like the easiest yes in New York politics. Get on, sit down, go. No fumbling for your phone at the OMNY reader, no $3 base fare, no driver telling you the back door is broken so swipe up front. Then the city’s Independent Budget Office did the math, and the math is not friendly. On June 3, 2026, the IBO estimated that making every city bus fare-free could cost as much as $1.1 billion a year, according to amNewYork’s reporting on the analysis. That is roughly $400 million higher than the $700 million Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s campaign had floated.
The fare you pay is not the only thing the city would be eating. The IBO’s $1.1 billion scenario assumes ridership climbs 25 percent once buses are free, and it folds in express buses, the longer-haul coaches that charge a premium $7.25 fare, per amNewYork. More riders riding more often means more service to run, and free express rides mean giving up the priciest tickets on the system. Stack those together and you blow past $1 billion.
The higher cost is partly proof the idea works. When the MTA actually tried it, riders showed up. From September 24, 2023 to August 31, 2024, five routes went fare-free as a pilot: the Bx18A/B in the Bronx, the B60 in Brooklyn, the M116 in Manhattan, the Q4 in Queens, and the S46/96 on Staten Island. Weekday ridership on those lines rose about 30 percent and weekend ridership about 38 percent, and 23 percent of riders said they took the trip specifically because it was free, The Nation reported from the MTA’s own evaluation. The pilot ran the MTA about $12.3 million over nine months. People earning under $28,000 a year drove the biggest jump.
One result of the pilot had nothing to do with money. Assaults on bus operators across the five free routes dropped 38.9 percent, according to The Nation’s account of the evaluation. J.P. Patafio, a vice president at Transport Workers Union Local 100, put it plainly: “fare box is responsible for 50 percent of the assaults on my operators.” Take away the moment a driver has to tell someone to pay, and you take away half the fights.
Free fares also speed the bus up, which is the “fast” half of Mamdani’s old “fast and free” slogan. Transportation economist Charles Komanoff found that eliminating fare payment would cut dwell time, the seconds a bus idles at each stop while people tap in, enough to make trips about 12 percent faster and lift ridership nearly 23 percent, per Streetsblog’s writeup of his study. Komanoff pegged the cost of replacing lost bus fare revenue at roughly $600 million, the floor of the estimates. The IBO’s $1.1 billion is its 25 percent ridership scenario, express buses already counted in.
The IBO also priced out the alternative: expanding Fair Fares, the existing program that gives low-income New Yorkers half-price MetroCards and OMNY taps. Fair Fares currently runs about $121 million a year and reaches only an estimated 40 percent of the people eligible for it, with eligibility capped at 150 percent of the federal poverty level, roughly $23,500 for an individual, amNewYork reported. Beefing it up would cost somewhere between $177 million and $509 million a year depending on how far you stretch the income limit, the IBO found, which is dramatically cheaper than free buses.
The two are not the same thing. Fair Fares is means-tested. You have to qualify and enroll, and the budget watchdogs pushing it lean on one fact: nearly three-quarters of low-income commuters in this city ride the subway, not the bus, according to amNewYork’s coverage of the fiscal critique. A discount that follows the rider onto the train reaches people a free bus never touches. Free buses are universal. No application, no income check, none of the 60 percent of eligible people who never sign up. You just get on. The IBO laid out the choice without saying which to pick.
None of this matters much right now, because the plan is stuck. Mamdani cannot snap his fingers and zero out the fare. Free citywide buses need the MTA, which Governor Kathy Hochul controls, and Hochul has been openly skeptical, with MTA Chair Janno Lieber also opposed, amNewYork reported. The mayor himself has admitted the full program will not happen in 2026, conceding to Politico that the realistic near-term step is reviving a free-bus pilot. Bushwick Daily reported earlier that Mamdani stacked the MTA board with allies, picking former DOT commissioner and street-redesign pioneer Janette Sadik-Khan, but the math is against him: the mayor controls only four of the board’s 17 votes, while the governor appoints six.
While the free-bus fight stalls in Albany, what riders are actually getting is the opposite of free. The MTA has expanded fare enforcement onto local bus routes, with roving teams of special inspectors in tactical vests issuing electronic summonses and even piloting fare checks while buses are moving, the World Socialist Web Site reported from the agency’s May board meeting. The pitch was fast and free. The delivery is a crackdown.
If you ride a bus in Bushwick, Bed-Stuy or anywhere the B60 and its cousins run, this is your money and your fare being argued over in rooms you are not in. Read the IBO’s transit research and cost comparisons at the Independent Budget Office’s site, ibo.nyc.gov, and if you make under about $23,000, or close to it, check whether you already qualify for the half-price Fair Fares card the city is funding right now. The Riders Alliance keeps a plain-English walkthrough of the eligibility questionnaire and the official ACCESS HRA application at ridersalliance.org/fair-fares-signup. The free bus may be years out. The discount you might be leaving on the table exists today.
Featured image: Bushwick Daily
