Mayor Mamdani Pledges Free Buses for All New Yorkers, City Reminds Him Buses Get Stuck in the Same Traffic as Paying Customers
Transit Experts Suggest Fixing the Subway Might Address More Commuters; Mayor’s Office Finds This ‘Unnecessarily Complicated’ Bohiney.com | The London Prat NEW YORK, N.Y. – Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who took office in January 2026 on a platform that combined socialist housing policy with the particular brand of inspirational transit optimism that New Yorkers greet with cautious enthusiasm and three delayed trains, announced this week an accelerated timeline for his signature free bus service pledge, promising that the MTA’s entire bus network would be fare-free within his first term. The announcement was welcomed by bus riders, applauded by transit advocates, and received by the city’s 4.6 million daily subway riders with the kind of polite silence that signals they have questions about relevance. The free bus proposal, which Mamdani has described as ‘a transformative equity measure’ and which transit economists have described as ‘approximately as expensive as extending the subway to...