NEW YORK — New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani campaigned on three things: freeze the rent, universal daycare and fast, free buses.
New Yorkers — obviously used to slow buses — are going to have to keep waiting for free ones.
Tight city and state budgets and disagreement among Democrats are blocking the mayor’s plan, and the mayor himself does not appear to be pushing hard to get it done this year.
Instead, the mayor is touting a pilot program that lawmakers in Albany seem open to paying for.
“We’re encouraged by the conversations we’re having with the governor and legislative leaders to take action on that in 2026 as a first step,” Mamdani said in an interview with POLITICO on Tuesday.
The remark is an acknowledgment of what was becoming clear in Albany and at City Hall: Free buses are going to have to wait.
The mayor said he is “absolutely committed to making buses fast and free.”
The mayor has been able to tout a universal daycare pilot as a win. But a bus pilot would be retreading ground he covered as a member of the Assembly in 2023, when he helped get money in the budget to test a free bus route in each of the five boroughs. He touted successes from that to campaign for citywide free buses. But internal disputes between Mamdani and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie over a housing deal in the following year’s state budget led to the program’s demise — instead of expansion — in 2024.
Both the state Assembly and Senate’s budgets support affordable buses, though the Senate’s language is vaguer than the Assembly’s, which has a dollar figure and firm language about another pilot.
Meanwhile, other Democrats have been offering alternatives to Mamdani’s free bus plan.
City Council Speaker Julie Menin and Gov. Kathy Hochul support an expansion of a discount program for low-income subway and bus riders.
Supporters of the program, known as Fair Fares, argue it can deliver more help to people who need it most because it also covers subway rides. State lawmakers may also like it because it’s currently city funded.
But Mamdani has never been fully onboard.
While Mamdani has supported expanding the program, he has a habitual aversion to income-based programs.
In 2024, he specifically singled out Fair Fares to say “means-tested programs will never reach everyone they’re meant to.” This political impulse has also shown up in the pilot program for universal free daycare and in the opening of a free preschool in one of the city’s wealthiest neighborhoods.
The current version of Fair Fares only offers half-price fares, serves about 400,000 people and costs roughly $96 million a year. Expanding eligibility and offering free fares could cost around $150 million more — but that assumption relies on only half the people eligible actually signing up.
State Sen. Jeremy Cooney, a Rochester Democrat who is chair of the body’s Transportation Committee, said lawmakers want to do something to make transit more affordable, but “making every bus in New York City free is just not financially feasible.”
“I would tell this to the mayor: I know you care about the most vulnerable,” he said. “This is a way — working within the existing system — that we could increase support for the most vulnerable and start there, and then look to do an expansion of that.”
Cooney also said there may be some room to help the city pay for Fair Fares, but he would tie it to more funding for upstate transportation systems too.
There are also some indications that, given other issues facing the city, the mayor has for weeks put a broad rollout of free buses on the back burner.
During a March City Council budget hearing, Council Majority Leader Shaun Abreu asked state Metropolitan Transportation Authority chief Janno Lieber about an idea floated to have free buses during this summer’s World Cup.
“We’re not going to study things that are not on the agenda of the city and the state and other power players,” Lieber said. “Nobody’s asked me to give free buses to people who are paying $1,000 a ticket from other countries. No one’s asked me that so far.”
Similarly, Cooney said that while Mamdani has asked him for some things, he has not had a “direct ask” from the mayor on free buses.
During MTA board meetings, the city representatives to the transit agency have not been pushing free buses either.
Transit advocates seem to support both free buses and expanded Fair Fares.
“Transit affordability is a big part of making New York more affordable and that’s the appeal of both free buses and a transformed Fair Fares program that delivers free and more affordable fares to more New Yorkers,” said Danny Pearlstein, a spokesperson for the Riders Alliance.
Mamdani has also pledged to make buses fast. Lieber has said the MTA is working with the city on that.
Jason Beeferman contributed to this report.
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