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.
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.
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?)
Big parts of the US? The justification being, how do you otherwise go home from the bar in a small town?
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.