The free ride is over.
On Sunday, the MTA will end a yearlong pilot program that’s allowed New Yorkers to legally skip the farebox on one bus route in each of the five boroughs.
The program was funded by the state Legislature in 2023. Its termination comes as the MTA reports sky-high rates of fare evasion, with the agency reporting that nearly half of the city’s bus riders don’t bother to pay for their trips.
MTA officials during a board meeting last month said weekday ridership increased by as much as 35% on the free routes during the course of the pilot — but also warned the program falsely signaled to New Yorkers that they’re allowed to ride any bus without paying.
“Different people had different ideas as to what success here would be like,” said Jon Kaufman, the MTA’s chief of strategic initiatives. “For me, the fact that [the program] is predominantly benefitting existing riders is an interesting finding. If your goal is helping them out with affordability, I think there’s smarter ways to do that than this.”
The MTA’s analysis found that fare evasion increased on bus routes located near the free ones — but noted the jump in fare beating was similar to what the agency is observing citywide.
Both verbal and physical assaults against bus drivers dropped significantly on free buses, the report showed. Assaults on bus drivers decreased 39% on the free bus routes compared to the year before the pilot — compared to a 20% decrease on all other routes in the city.
J.P. Patafio, head of buses at Transport Workers Union Local 100, said his drivers benefitted from the program.
“Bus drivers felt less stress, they felt happier about the work they did because there were less incidents and assaults,” Patafio said.
State lawmakers like Queens Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani, who has advocated for free transit service since taking office in 2021, viewed the pilot program’s launch as a win. Earlier this year, he pushed for $45 million in funding to increase the number of free routes from five to 15, but the measure didn’t make it into the state budget.
“Thanks in part to the MTA’s opposition, that was not a proposal that was taken up in the final agreement,” Mamdani said. “When you see fare evasion at levels of 48%, that speaks to an economic issue where working-class New Yorkers are being priced out of public transit. And at the core of it must be a solution that addresses the economic cause.”
Mamdani said he’d keep fighting for free bus service in next year’s legislative session. But he noted the MTA has even bigger funding problems, and lawmakers must also address the $16.5 billion hole left in the agency’s construction budget by Gov. Kathy Hochul’s indefinite pause of congestion pricing.