"If you ask people in the Bronx what they think about making the bus free, you get a lot of versions of yes. "Why not? Yes, it definitely should," said Melanie Marrero as she waited for the Bx18 bus with her two young children. "Because, as you see, it's like almost three dollars, and it's going to go up." Today the bus costs $2.90 per ride for adults."
"For a while last year, this bus line was free for everyone thanks to a temporary pilot program supported by an obscure state assemblyman from Queens named Zohran Mamdani, who made it part of his dark-horse candidacy for mayor. "As mayor, I'll make every bus fast and free," Mamdani pledged in this video. That message helped propel him to a resounding win in the Democratic primary with a campaign focused on affordability,"
""We want people to have the right to the city. We want people to experience that mobility and that ability to get around," said Charles Komanoff, an economist and longtime transit advocate in New York who supports Mamdani's plan for free buses. That plan would help make those buses faster too, Komanoff says, because passengers could board through all doors at once instead of waiting in line to pay."
Many Bronx riders express support for free buses, citing the $2.90 adult fare and concerns about rising costs. A recent pilot made the Bx18 free for a time, tied to a Queens assemblyman who campaigned on fare elimination and won a key primary. Other cities have tried free-bus policies with mixed results. Transit advocates are split: some argue that free fares enable all-door boarding, speed vehicles, and shift riders from Ubers and cars; others view fare elimination as lower priority and urge alternative approaches to improve service and equity.
Read at www.npr.org
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