Surprise, surprise: There really is no such thing as a free bus.
One of New York City’s socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s key campaign promises was that he would provide free bus services to everyone in the city.
Not only is that goal seemingly not even in the medium-term plans for the mayor, but one of the programs he pointed to as a successful model has gone belly up.
Bloomberg News reported Tuesday that Kansas City, Missouri, ended its experiment to provide free bus services to people in the city. It will now begin charging riders for the service.
“Kansas City reinstated bus fares this month after six years, unwinding a closely watched experiment that inspired zero-fare transit campaigns across the U.S., including New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s,” Bloomberg reported.
Kansas City’s free bus was sold as a cost-saving measure that would make ridership more “equitable.”
The city created the program with a major federal cash influx during the COVID-19 lockdowns. But it became financially untenable as the initial funds ran out in 2023 and the cost of operations reportedly climbed to $15 million a year, nearly double the initial projections.
Part of the problem is endemic to other “free” transportation services in big cities. Without the small amount of buy-in from customers and given the tendency of blue cities to tolerate mass homelessness and recidivism, these services naturally become more dangerous and more expensive.
In his advocacy for the free bus program, Mamdani claimed that it would make the system safer. That claim seems doubtful at best.
In making this claim he relied on crime reports showing that free buses lead to decreased assaults on bus drivers. Given that drivers don’t have to ask for tickets, there are possibly fewer reasons for a violent confrontation. But the report, as City Journal noted, was based on a very small sample from an already existing New York program.
And in most cases assaults on passengers have typically gone up.
The New York Post reported in August that drivers and riders complained that Kansas City buses had become “unreliable, filthy, rolling homeless shelters.”
Free Press additionally reported that the Kansas City bus system became plagued by “loop riders,” which are “passengers who, when offered a free ride, would occupy bus seats for hours, sometimes all day, as they refused to get off at the end of a given route.”
Many of these loop riders made life worse for other bus passengers. An increase in assaults and vandalism on the buses meant that the city had to increase security and spend additional millions of dollars to keep passengers safe.
Some cities have learned this lesson and have dramatically improved their transportation systems by putting up stronger barriers to fare evaders. The Bay Area Rapid Transit system, which has been struggling for years, dramatically reduced costs and boosted ridership by installing new, more secure fare gates. A rare moment of sanity for the San Francisco Bay Area.
New York City would likely have even more extreme problems with rider safety and slower bus routes than other cities. Overall crime is down in the city compared to a year ago, but random assaults and murders on the subway are up dramatically.
You can be sure that the small number of people who cause the most mayhem on the subway will find a free bus just as appealing, if not more so.
And that additional dysfunction eats into the overall cost of the free bus, which wouldn’t actually be free at all.
The Washington Examiner’s Daniel Idfresne recently reported that the New York City Independent Budget Office estimated the yearly cost to operate this free fare system would be $1.1 billion. This is reportedly a “roughly $450 million annual markup” from the estimate Mamdani cited on the campaign trail.
That’s a lot of money that the city simply doesn’t have. Budgetary gimmicks and delayed payments can’t continue forever.
Like with the mayor’s government-run grocery store plan, the free bus proposal likely comes with a massive, unsustainable price tag and a dubious path to success.
So, will that reality and the Kansas City bus failure deter Mamdani from going ahead with his plan?
Probably not.
Socialists have a particular knack for ignoring history, even very recent history.
The only limiting factor here may be that the bus program is run by a state-level agency and the folks in the state capital might not be so keen on losing out on a whole lot of revenue while gaining more than a few more headaches to appease the mayor.
