Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic mayoral nominee and frontrunner, dismissed on Thursday MTA Chair Janno Lieber’s recent criticism of his signature campaign promise to make buses operated by the agency free.
Lieber is one of a number of critics of Mamdani’s fare-free bus plan. As amNewYork reported Wednesday in an in-depth examination of the plan, skeptics say Mamdani faces numerous challenges to fulfilling this campaign promise — from financing operations without a state-approved tax increase, to wresting control of the bus system away from the MTA.
During a Thursday afternoon Brooklyn campaign stop, Mamdani responded to Lieber’s comments from earlier this week on NY1, stating that his free bus proposal needed to be studied far more thoroughly.
“Any change of the scale that’s being talked about, taking a section of our incredibly important transit system and changing it entirely has to be studied,” Lieber said, noting that the MTA studied the potential impact of the congestion pricing program for five years before implementing it.
The MTA boss said such a review is necessary to understand if the MTA needs to run more buses, bring extra depots online, and account for a loss in subway fare revenue as well.
But Mamdani — who is also a democratic socialist Queens Assembly member — said on Oct. 30 that he heard many similar criticisms when pushing for a free bus pilot program in Albany. The pilot saw the MTA make one bus line in each of the five boroughs free for a year.
The test run ended in the summer of 2024, with the MTA declaring it a failure because it slowed average bus speeds, despite more regular riders boarding each route.
During the Thursday press gaggle, Mamdani didn’t offer any new information about his bus plan — but he said he took comments criticizing his bus vision with “a grain of salt.”
“I take things that are said with a grain of salt about the lack of changing the way that we do things here in New York City,” Mamdani said. “When we were pushing for free buses in Albany, these were a lot of the same concerns that were raised at the time, and we won the first free buses in New York City history. We made one bus route free in every single borough.”
Lieber also aired concerns about subsidizing bus fares for those who can afford to pay, saying he prefers the city’s means-tested Fair Fares program, which provides half-fare rides to low-income New Yorkers up to 145% of the federal poverty level. Mamdani’s chief rival, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, has mounted a similar criticism against his free bus plan.
Mamdani also stood by his campaign’s $700 million-a-year cost estimate for making buses free, in response to Lieber’s prediction that it will bear a price tag closer to $1 billion. A 2023 Independent Budget Office analysis estimated the expected price tag at a minimum of $652 million.
“I continue to be confident in our cost estimates,” Mamdani said. “I think that much of the estimates that are being put forward are more of hypotheticals than actually realistic assessments of where we are in this moment.”
He added that he is “excited to work with” Lieber.
The Democratic nominee has said he wants to fund the program — and other core campaign initiatives, such as free universal child care — by raising the state’s corporate tax rate to 11.5% and personal income taxes on millionaires by 2%.
However, Mamdani needs Albany lawmakers and Gov. Kathy Hochul to approve such a tax increase. While Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie has said he supports raising taxes on the wealthy, the governor — who is headed into a potentially tough reelection year — has said tax hikes are a nonstarter.
Even those who tacitly support free buses in New York noted that such a proposal comes with a hefty cost that someone will need to pay.
“Nothing is free in life, so we’re not talking about free buses,” John Samuelsen, president of the Transport Workers Union International, told amNewYork. “We’re talking about building the cost of the buses into the wider tax bases. Just like we don’t pay for sanitation at the point of service.”
