Free Buses Are a Recipe for Disaster

By Charles Lane of AEI. Excerpts:

"In April, Kansas City, Missouri, announced that it was reinstating fares—five years after becoming the first major city to eliminate them. Kansas City’s program had run out of the federal Covid-19 relief dollars it had relied on to cover foregone annual fare revenue, which had amounted to $9 million in 2019, the last year before zero fares. Other sources of revenue are not sufficient and, facing competing budgetary demands, local authorities plan to impose a $2.00 per ride fare."

[there] "was an increase of “loop riders”—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 were homeless people, and they often clashed with ordinary commuters. Assaults on drivers fell after zero-fare began, but this was partly offset by new violence among passengers, and vandalism.

The city had to increase security, including bringing in new officers, at an eventual cost of $6 million per year. When the Kansas City area transit system surveyed its bus drivers in April 2024, 92 percent who had worked before zero-fares were instituted said that safety had deteriorated. Bus operator morale suffered, causing absenteeism and turnover.

Passengers complained—loudly."

"Kansas City’s system had an operating budget of about $114 million when it initiated zero fares, 8 percent of which came from fares. New York City’s buses, by contrast, derive about twice that percentage of their operating budget from fares"

"What, exactly, is progressive, or socially just, about shifting the entire burden of funding bus transit to taxpayers, including many who don’t use it, when many of those who do use the bus are willing and able to chip in? Like modest co-pays for doctor visits, bus fares (which are already subsidized) ensure that consumers of a public service have “skin in the game”—an incentive to use as much as needed, but no more."

"As it happens, the MTA has already run a one-year free-fare pilot program, under a bill Mamdani co-sponsored in the state legislature. Completed in August 2024, the plan created one free-fare bus route in each of the five boroughs. The results were decidedly underwhelming. Ridership grew significantly—no surprise there—but only 12 percent of the growth came from new riders. The rest were existing riders taking more trips—and picking them up caused bus speeds to fall by 4.3 percent. It cost the MTA $16.5 million in foregone fare revenue."

"the new riders enjoying the free fares were a bit more likely to be earning above $100,000 per year than the pre-pilot clientele: 11 percent vs. 9 percent."

"The Soviet Union used to charge a few kopecks to ride the bus or the subway in Moscow. Mamdani’s idea of socialism doesn’t have room for even that much individual responsibility—or realism."