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.
Also think about all the money you save for ticketing infrastructure and personel handling ticket control and service.
And all the bus drivers not assaulted while not being the bus fare bouncer
don’t think of it as a giveaway to the undeserving
Unfortunately, this mindset is a core part of American culture.
As someone who still owns a car anyway, I essentially never ride the bus because the marginal cost of a bus trip is almost always higher than the marginal cost of the equivalent car trip (basically every time unless I have to pay for parking, which is exceedingly rare). The total cost of the car trip is higher, to be sure, but most of that is fixed cost that I’d have to pay anyway, so foregoing it doesn’t actually save me money. I could bring the marginal cost of the bus to $0 by buying a monthly transit pass, but unless it could eliminate all my car trips and thus allow me to get rid of my car, it’s still a net increase in cost and doesn’t make sense.
Even if I want to take transit, because it’s a straight shot to my destination or lets me avoid a bunch of rush-hour traffic or something like that, it’s not worth paying $5 round trip fare when gas to go that distance is $1.
On the other hand, if the transit fare were eliminated, I’d use it for many trips even as a car owner. There’s a huge potential for congestion reduction just by eliminating that weird dichotomy where economics basically forces people to either go all-in on a transit pass or all-in on driving.
(In reality, I bike most of the time, in part because its marginal cost is even lower than driving. But ignore that for the purpose of the above argument and pretend driving and transit were my only choices.)
Edit:
Now that I think about it, it would change my habits even more because I often avoid going to places downtown at all due to the lack of free parking. If transit were free, it would probably be really good for business over there.
Also, this cost disparity is exacerbated when you’re talking about a family (or other group) instead of an individual. Spending $5 in transit fare instead of $1 in gas is bad enough, but when it’s $20 in transit fare instead of $1 for my family of four, even the paid parking starts looking like a better alternative, which is terrible.
unless I have to pay for parking, which is exceedingly rare
I guess that one of the hidden subsidies. Mandatory parking cost (of land) gets factored in to cost of business and socialised over customers that way. Hard for people to visualise that though as the true cost of that land is probably the opportunity cost, since the market price is probably skewed by the regulations.
It is absolutely a hidden subsidy, and a huge one at that. Donald Shoup (RIP) wrote a whole book about it that’s relatively famous in urban planning circles.
(That Dropbox copy was linked directly from his publications page, so it’s officially sanctioned, BTW.)
Here’s an Internet Archive mirror of the book, for people who’d like to read in their browser instead of downloading the PDF.
I am absolutely mystified at the existence of such people (especially since you can view a PDF file in a browser window anyway, and probably with a better UI than the one IA uses), but OK.
I also just want to support IA. I love the project and I want more people to check it out because a lot of people don’t realize that it has way more than just the Wayback machine.
Fair enough!
What if you drink alcohol or use recreational drugs? You can still take the bus and won’t endanger anyone (unless you’re totally off your head). Drink/drugged drivers are a danger to everyone.
One of the anti-everything groups in our city actually put out a public statement about how people advocating for public transit “just wanted to be able to go out partying and then ride transit home!! REEEEEEE!!!”
Many people went “yeah, duh?” <confused looks> Isn’t that a phenomenal reason to have great public transit? It literally saves lives and promotes enjoying life.
Calvinism is such a blight upon humanity.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I have no experience with that.
Not everyone drinks or do drugs.
Everyone who drives, or who rides while someone else drives, or who walks or bikes near a road, absorbs the risk of impaired drivers.
True, but at least from were I’m from almost nobody drives impaired.
Or, at least they don’t declare it loudly.
Narhh it is pretty frowned upon and those who do it don’t care about free public transport anyway.
Where is it not frowned up? (Okay, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy and all of Balkans. But otherwise?)
Where on earth are you from?
In my city the bus to downtown (CBD or “town”) is $8.69 one way. For my family of 5 we’re $43 bucks to get into town. One way. It’s $86 for the round trip.
It’s cheaper to drive and pay $30 for pre booked parking for a family outing then it is to go via public transport.
Even if we go off peak where the prices by approx half.
Cost me $7 round trip to take the light rail to the other CBD (4km away). For the whole family it’s still cheaper to find street parking then to pub transport it.
But when it’s one person it makes no sense to commute to work, $30 a day parking plus tolls (easily $50 to go to work) when I can do it for $17 a day.
Still way too much. If I didn’t wfh as much as I do it would be a significant cost
This is a NYC initiative, this is a lot of words to say you’ve never lived there. Fare is not $20 nor $5, and the vast majority of NYCers do not have a car. Owning a car in NYC is also wickedly expensive, both in expected and unexpected costs.
You’re right, I was extrapolating to talk about how such a policy might be applied more broadly, and still be worth it even in places that aren’t NYC.
Paywalled. (I hope there is more to it than the copy paste text).
It appears the original OP (not me; I just cross-posted) quoted the first, second, and last paragraphs. The archive link already posted (https://archive.ph/gBRoW) appears to include the whole article, though.
There’s an archive link in the post body that includes the full article.
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.
