As other cities experiment with fare-free transit, some MTA board members are calling on elected officials to come up with new funding sources that would allow the financially strapped agency to let New Yorkers ride buses for free.
The push comes as the Council of the District of Columbia voted last week to do away with Metrobus fares in Washington starting in July, and as Boston last year tapped into $8 million in federal pandemic relief money to eliminate fares on three Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority bus routes through at least 2024.
While MTA officials have warned that higher-than-expected fare hikes may be needed by 2025 if ridership does not return to pre-pandemic levels, others say the time is now for mass transit to be funded similarly to the police, fire and sanitation services that are usually deemed “essential.”
“Not only do I think it’s not a pipe dream, it’s a necessity in post-COVID New York,” John Samuelsen, international president of the Transport Workers Union and an MTA board member, told THE CITY. “What are they going to do, keep raising the fare until they ice out the people they want to use the transit system?”
The union head tweeted last week that transit service should be built into the tax base, noting that “We don’t pay cops or firefighters per use and our children don’t pay to enter schools” and adding, “We need safe, reliable Mass Transit with no fare” along with a thumbs-up emoji.
Other sources have told THE CITY there are rumblings from Albany on legislative proposals for fare-free bus service.
An MTA spokesperson declined to comment for this story, but CEO and chairperson Janno Lieber has repeatedly called for transit to be funded as an essential service, saying that Washington, Albany and City Hall must find ways to help North America’s largest mass transit system get through its latest fiscal crisis.
At last week’s agency board meeting, Lieber said a discussion about new forms of funding “needs to unfold sooner rather than later.”
“Our recommendation is not to kick the can, to careen 100 miles an hour toward the fiscal cliff,” Lieber said after the Nov. 30 board meeting, “but rather to come up with a plan now that makes sure that the riders can count on the system being there at a high level of service, at an affordable cost.”
MTA Board Member David R. Jones, who is also president and CEO of the nonprofit Community Service Society — which was instrumental in the creation of the “Fair Fares” program that provides low-income New Yorkers with a 50% discount on subway and bus rides — noted that side benefits to fare-free transit could include enticing people onto mass transit and out of more expensive forms of transportation, such as for-hire vehicles.
But while fare-free transit is “politically attractive,” Jones said, it’s also “risky.”
“It would be a progressive step for the city,” he told THE CITY. “But the devil is in the details: how do you fund it?”
Samuelsen, Jones and others concede that the idea of free bus rides could become a reality only if federal, state and city elected officials come up with alternatives for funding a transit system whose farebox revenues have been clobbered by the pandemic — yet service frequency and quality must not decrease.
The MTA did suspend fare collection on local bus routes and shifted to rear-door boarding in March 2020 to lessen bus operators’ exposure to COVID-19. Collection resumed in August of that year, but the agency has continued to struggle with fare evasion: THE CITY reported that more than 50% of all bus riders in The Bronx hop on for free, compared with 40% on Staten Island, 30% on Manhattan and Brooklyn buses and 15% in Queens.
“I see people get on the bus all the time without paying, so it’s already free for them,” said Jennifer Saura, 30. She spoke to THE CITY in Spanish while waiting on Wednesday for a Bx2 bus on East 149th Street in The Bronx. “That can be frustrating for those who always pay the fare,” Saura said.
