asdfasdfasdfSomething Surprising Happens When Bus Rides Are Free
Onno (VK6FLAB)Pay walled
Timothy KingFree buses? Really? Of all the promises that Zohran Mamdani made during his New York City mayoral campaign, that one struck some skeptics as the most frivolous leftist fantasy. Unlike housing, groceries and child care, which weigh heavily on New Yorkers’ finances, a bus ride is just a few bucks. Is it really worth the huge effort to spare people that tiny outlay?
It is. Far beyond just saving riders money, free buses deliver a cascade of benefits, from easing traffic to promoting public safety. Just look at Boston; Chapel Hill, N.C.; Richmond, Va.; Kansas City, Mo.; and even New York itself, all of which have tried it to excellent effect. And it doesn’t have to be costly — in fact, it can come out just about even.
As a lawyer, I feel most strongly about the least-discussed benefit: Eliminating bus fares can clear junk cases out of our court system, lowering the crushing caseloads that prevent our judges, prosecutors and public defenders from focusing their attention where it’s most needed.
I was a public defender, and in one of my first cases I was asked to represent a woman who was not a robber or a drug dealer — she was someone who had failed to pay the fare on public transit. Precious resources had been spent arresting, processing, prosecuting and trying her, all for the loss of a few dollars. This is a daily feature of how we criminalize poverty in America.
Unless a person has spent real time in the bowels of a courthouse, it’s hard to imagine how many of the matters clogging criminal courts across the country originate from a lack of transit. Some of those cases result in fines; many result in defendants being ordered to attend community service or further court dates. But if people can’t afford the fare to get to those appointments and can’t get a ride, their only options — jump a turnstile or flout a judge’s order — expose them to re-arrest. Then they may face jail time, which adds significant pressure to our already overcrowded facilities. Is this really what we want the courts spending time on?
Free buses can unclog our streets, too. In Boston, eliminating the need for riders to pay fares or punch tickets cut boarding time by as much as 23 percent, which made everyone’s trip faster. Better, cheaper, faster bus rides give automobile owners an incentive to leave their cars at home, which makes the journey faster still — for those onboard as well as those who still prefer to drive.
How much should a government be willing to pay to achieve those outcomes? How about nothing? When Washington State’s public transit systems stopped charging riders, in many municipalities the state came out more or less even — because the money lost on fares was balanced out by the enormous savings that ensued.
Fare evasion was one of the factors that prompted Mayor Eric Adams to flood New York City public transit with police officers. New Yorkers went from shelling out $4 million for overtime in 2022 to $155 million in 2024. What did it get them? In September 2024, officers drew their guns to shoot a fare beater who was wielding a knife and two innocent bystanders ended up with bullet wounds, the kind of accident that’s all but inevitable in such a crowded setting.
New York City tried a free bus pilot program in 2023 and 2024 and, as predicted, ridership increased — by 30 percent on weekdays and 38 percent on weekends, striking figures that could make a meaningful dent in New York’s chronic traffic problem (and, by extension, air and noise pollution). Something else happened that was surprising: Assaults on bus operators dropped 39 percent. Call it the opposite of the Adams strategy: Lowering barriers to access made for fewer tense law enforcement encounters, fewer acts of desperation and a safer city overall.
If free buses strike you as wasteful, you’re not alone. Plenty of the beneficiaries would be people who can afford to pay. Does it make sense to give them a freebie? Yes, if it improves the life of the city, just as free parks, libraries and public schools do. Don’t think of it as a giveaway to the undeserving. Think of it as a gift to all New Yorkers in every community. We deserve it.
I wouldn’t have thought of the judicial/policing ramifications.
All of fare enforcement goes away. All the ticket kiosks. IT to support them. Credit card processing. Customer support that isn’t helping arrange/plan rides or deal with safety/service issues. Drivers spending time accepting fares instead of driving. Cages to separate buses into paid and unpaid sections when there’s a second fare collector. And with it goes all of the cost to riders of dealing with those things.
Fares dictate the physical layout of transit systems to accommodate collecting the fares. Stairs up from one platform down to another so that a fare can be collected between an arterial service like a subway and a peripheral service like an underground tram. Or leaving and re-entering a station for commuter rail instead of having a cross-platform transfer.
The whole system is better if the people who benefit from it (everybody, businesses, industries, vehicle users benefiting from decreased traffic) pay for it in the simplest way possible without a bunch of extra steps.
Nicole ParsonsKoch Network has waged a multi-decade war on public transportation
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/19/climate/koch-brothers-public-transit.html
Hate anything where the races & classes mix.
Even kept money-losing ripoff artists like Uber & Lyfft afloat to kneecap public transit
https://jacobin.com/2019/08/uber-koch-brothers-david-charles-rideshare-public-transit
The fossil fuel industry is desperately seeking every possible avenue to keep their captive consumers & stop a necessary phase-out of their toxic products.
That includes funding fascists.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/20/us/politics/koch-network-2024-election-trump.html
Rob Bellinger@Npars01 @bluemoon @hissingmeerkat
In 2015, the Boston Globe published an excellent expose about the Kochs' work to derail public transit in #Nashville, including public fearmongering and a smear campaign against the mayor. Unfortunately it appears to be paywalled.
It reads like a Simpsons episode, all for the worship of oil and tires, and would be funny if it didn't really happen.
Stuart Celarier ❌👑@rbellinger @Npars01 @bluemoon @hissingmeerkat Non-paywalled link to the 2015 Boston Globe story: https://web.archive.org/web/20250206191305/https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2015/10/10/nashville-mayor-wanted-bring-two-parts-his-city-together-then-was-crushed-state-legislators/QT91unb8xk4xPBqkTumgMP/story.html
@VisualStuart @rbellinger @bluemoon @hissingmeerkat
1. Corrupt car dealerships getting together to end automakers unions too.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/05/rich-republicans-party-car-dealers-2024-desantis.html
https://jacobin.com/2024/01/nikki-haley-south-carolina-scandal-mismanagement
https://www.goiam.org/news/sc-gov-haley-hates-unions-more-than-she-likes-jobs/
2. Traffic fine revenue
In many cities there's a growing racial divide between urban & suburban.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/31/us/police-ticket-quotas-money-funding.html
Demographic changes have shifted back to the rich living in the urban core blessed with nice short commutes &...
1/
2/
... everyone else forced into suburban commuter hell.
https://www.traffictechnologytoday.com/features/feature-is-automated-traffic-enforcement-for-safety-or-profit.html
https://sycamoretn.org/how-criminal-fees-fines-fund-state-county-govt/
Traffic enforcement became a major source of city income off of POC running a daily gauntlet of cops pulling them over for minor offenses like busted tail lights and issuing tickets. Risks of being shot by cops.
Forcing people to lose a day at work for car repairs at dealerships, the only ones with a supply of parts.
3/
Chokepoint Capitalism at its best.
If the fines were challenged, more losses at an overburdened court system.
If the fines were paid late, more losses from late fees. Traffic enforcement started working with ICE and detentions increased, leaving a vehicle to be confiscated.
Eventually people give up their cars & take transit, only to have austerity measures placed on public transit subsidies.
City transit becomes a political, economic, & social justice issue.
4/
Now traffic enforcement is conjoined with both ICE officers' quotas & private prisons seeking detainees.
People at bus stops facing the same risk of detention as a commuter driving to work. Both risked detention.
GunChleoc@Npars01 There's a German charity buying fare offenders out of jail https://freiheitsfonds.de/
Numbers since Dezember 2021:
1679 people freed
291 years of incarceration avoided
Investment: 1,4M €
Benefits to the state: 22M €
Incarceration is expensive.
Elias Probst@hissingmeerkat In Germany, the criminalization of repeated fare evasion is still a major issue, which @freiheitsfonds continues to fight against and also uses donations to free people from prison.
Jennifer Kayla | Theogrin 🦊One of the ironies is that this is what 'conservative' folks claim to want -- to dispense with the bureaucracy, with the stress and the requirements and the governance. To have a simple system, which just works, plain and straightforward.
Removing fare requirements would do that! But that's not what they want. Not really.
They want a system which is entirely simple -- and exclusively for them.
But markets aren’t bureaucracy! /s
For real though, the smaller and more frequent the transaction the more of burden it becomes.
Philip@hissingmeerkat @pageflight Expanding on "Drivers spending time accepting fares instead of driving. " and physical layout:
It's better for bus timing and passenger efficiency too. You can now board and disembark from the back or front of the bus because it just doesn't matter any more. You aren't required to slowly board up front to pay the driver. An in->out flow *may* be nicer, but dropping the requirement will still help and speed things up.
It's better for bus timing and passenger efficiency too. You can now board and disembark from the back or front of the bus because it just doesn't matter any more. You aren't required to slowly board up front to pay the driver. An in->out flow *may* be nicer, but dropping the requirement will still help and speed things up.
Tim Ward ⭐🇪🇺🔶 #FBPE@pageflight There's always something like that that you don't see unless you're somewhere in the business.
The usual problem is that they're different budgets held by different public bodies, so that the council (or whatever) having to put in the investment isn't the one making the gains, and getting the one to cross-subsidise the other is often simply too much bureaucratic and political hassle. Like the savings you get in the criminal justice system from putting in CCTV (perps are more likely to plead guilty after seeing themselves on screen, which saves *lots* of money in the court system).
Eggs now in different baskets.@pageflight @bluemoon As far as I can remember the reduction in administration costs for pursuing non-payers has not figured in the debates here in Norway when large metropolitan city councils have discussed proposals to make bus travel free.
Edit: and not prosecuting people who do not have a ticket is a smart political move. One thing less for those worn down by life to have to worry about, and for those that rage against the authorities one point that can be struck from their grievance lists.
epicdemiologist@bluemoon Fare-free transit can decrease court workloads in other ways--just by getting people out of cars. I can't speak to NYC, but according to Stateline, over 50% of state and local court cases are traffic cases. https://www.pew.org/en/research-and-analysis/data-visualizations/2025/03/how-many-cases-and-what-kind-do-state-and-local-courts-handle
How Many Cases—and What Kind—Do State and Local Courts Handle?
State courts in the United States handle approximately 66 million cases each year spanning a diverse array of legal matters, from family disputes to traffic tickets. In 2024, The Pew Charitable Trusts published an issue brief exploring the number and types of cases heard in state courts and the effect that those matters have on courts and communities.
bouriquet@bluemoon We subsidize air traffic control for all the corporate/private jets that fly in US airspace and subsidize highways and bridges far beyond the pittance that Amtrak gets.
So why not? Getting around NYC is important just to get daily basics like fresh food or getting to a job or across town.
So why not? Getting around NYC is important just to get daily basics like fresh food or getting to a job or across town.
Kerr Avonsen (she/her)One thing that all modern governments seem to forget is that bureaucracy and enforcement are not free. The amount of money spent to prevent "theft" often hugely outweighs the amount that would be lost if they were left alone.
Example: local councils in Australia which offer free gas barbecues in local parks rather than making people pay for using them. Savings were huge, mainly because vandalism of the barbeques dropped to practically zero. It also made the barbecues themselves cheaper, since there was no need to add a pay mechanism to them.
Negative example: the #NDIS in Australia has been hobbled by so many bureaurcratic hurdles added to "prevent rorting" and dealing with "budget overruns" that it is fair to say that the entire purpose of that department is now to prevent anyone getting any money out of it at all. And of course the budget overruns haven't been addressed, because all the money is being spent on needless tests and recertifications and endless red tape.
Jean-François Mezei@bluemoon I am expecting once certian bus routes become free under Mamdani. For instance, some line in Manhattan which makes it easy for people to travel on surface between shops etc instead of taking taxis that clog up streets. (think ofthe "hop on , hop off" concept for buses.
There is already some free buses, such as the Q70 between Jackson Heights and La Guardia airport is fare free. (but once at subway, youhave to pay but can use machines there to buy tickets). https://www.mta.info/guides/airports/laguardia
Greg Johnston@bluemoon @vk6flab seems to me free transportation generates commerce. Helps people afford to go to restaurants, concerts, museums, theater. Couple that with affordable child care and suddenly many more people are able to work, feed their families, get an education. But what do I know, I’m just an antifa liberal?
mikeash
Ted M. Young@bluemoon I agree with all of those secondary benefits, but if the buses are free, will the subways also be free? If not, then might there be a large number of folks who switch to buses, which increases traffic, load times, crowding, and travel time? I’m no expert, but I hope that’s taken into account.
I also think perhaps there are better ways to solve problems like time for fare collection with Proof of Payment. And maybe a change in laws that could be more permanent than free bus fare?
Not all surface street bus systems are like NYC, in fact few are, so we can’t just look at cities that aren’t really comparable.
Again, I’m not opposed to the benefits, I’d just want to make sure the whole system is considered.
joshhunt@jitterted You're concerned you're the first to think of 'if you make it free more people will use it'?
Making both free at point of use would be ideal to me too
One of those things of which libertarians often crow is 'a rising tide lifts all boats', so often interpreted as the general quantity of wealth entering a locale as a net positive. A moment's reflection proves that interpretation false: a billionaire moving into an impoverished community (she says with bitter irony) is unlikely to result in substantial gains to that community as a whole.
In contrast, a comparatively meager benefit increase to mixed communities, a rise in the base standard of living, carries all the benefits you've stated and more. It lowers crime, both actual and perceived (a person with options available to them will typically not pick the most dangerous), it allows use of public resources rather than leaving them to collect dust, and it instills a sense that it's better to be there, helping to stem the outflow which historically plagues disadvantaged communities.
In his support of free buses and other bonuses to those living in the city, Mamdani distinguishes himself -- rather than a New York Mayor, he's working hard to show himself to be the Mayor of New York.
When the means by which people live create different interest groups there is conflict. Working class people getting wealthy in an area? Great, more money/resources for jobs to meet their wants and needs. They want the same infrastructure and comminity ammenties as everyone else too, so they will invest in those.
Someone that makes their money extraction value from an area? They likly dont even need to live or think about the area beyond their extraction operation.
Violet MadderFares are an excuse to surveil the passengers. They will pay EXTRA to inconvenience everyone while making sure that happens.
Dave Wilburn 
The DASH bus system in Alexandria, VA went to a free fare system during COVID and decided to keep it that way. It's awesome.
I've got a free bus that picks up a couple blocks from my house every half-hour and drops me off in Old Town by city hall 15 minutes later.
I'm making a lot more trips there now that I don't have to worry about finding and paying for parking. And that means I'm probably spending more money on goods and services when I get there. And that means there's probably more overall tax revenue than they'd get from fare collection.
And by the way, fare collection and enforcement costs money, too! It costs so much to collect money that you're better off just... not.
It was also great when I was called up for jury duty during the week of the ice storm. I didn't have to worry about how to drive to the court house or where I was going to park. It just worked.
Chris Geoghooligan ✊@DaveMWilburn I’ve been living in Alexandria for 19 years and had no idea. I’m pretty sure there’s a DASH stop right around the corner!
Gemini6Ice@bluemoon I had considered it perfectly reasonable (and the morally right thing to do) but lower priority. Thank you for educating me on how MUCH impact it could have
Michael Critz@bluemoon I HATE FREE BUSSES!
I hate the free bus that moves corporate profits to offshore tax havens.
I hate the free bus that moves billionaires’ money into Washington by the ton.
I hate the free bus that takes a corporation from being a business structure to a legal person.
I hate the free bus that moves taxpayer money into corporate subsidies.
SO MANY FREE BUSSES! THIS SOCIALIST AGENDA HAS TO STOP!
Hiisikoloart@bluemoon
In Finland the bus ride costs are rising every year, and now senior citicens with support aids need to pay too (which is logistical pain in the ass for everyone because the card reader is only at the front and not accessable AT ALL). Also, we can't pay with cash in our area anymore either.
All public transport should be free, there should be more buses, drivers should by default wear a raspirator (they are sick all the time), and be paid well with good toilet and lunch breaks.
Jocelynephiliac 
@bluemoon @aredridel one of my favorite features in Denver is the free bus line that travels the length of sixteenth street from the transit center. It made getting around downtown so much easier, especially when coming in from the airport.
Dr Susi Arnott@bluemoon People who think 'a few bucks' don't matter need educating
"Mediocre Bunny" Evelyn@SusiArnott @bluemoon
Maybe by holding them for six to twelve hours (depending on their metabolism) without food; and then turning them loose in a supermarket with, say, $3.00 plus the cash equivalent of the bus fare they'd need to get home?
Maybe by holding them for six to twelve hours (depending on their metabolism) without food; and then turning them loose in a supermarket with, say, $3.00 plus the cash equivalent of the bus fare they'd need to get home?
live like a civilian think like a civilian
figurehead bureaucrats & oligarchs are not living in our shoes
@bluemoon [stupid joke]
And that’s a good thing, because my damned shoes are tight enough already!
[see, I tolja it was stupid]
Else, Someone@bluemoon
Nothing more retarded that tickets for public transport. There's already _so_ many things that can go wrong so often, that introducing a phone battery into the equation is pure terrorism (the bad kind)
Nothing more retarded that tickets for public transport. There's already _so_ many things that can go wrong so often, that introducing a phone battery into the equation is pure terrorism (the bad kind)
Deb Nam-Krane@bluemoon Boston only did this for one or two lines
@spiegelmama @bluemoon As a blind guy who used to live in a city, I was lucky in that I got free metro and bus service and it was incredibly helpful when I needed to travel to different places, especially when i was a much older teen and was traveling alone.
Welkin@bluemoon Honorable and noble intention. Just like digging wells in Africa for free, this too will end in a disaster. In Africa it lead to contamination of water, broken down or in some cases non-functioning wells and lowering of water table. Over here it will lead to busses not getting repaired or replaced and frequency of busses getting impacted.
Better to focus on housing and providing a living wage. Encourage people to take the bus by giving incentives and removing barriers.
@bluemoon
The aim should be introduce dedicated buses lanes, aka #BRT. Increase frequency and timings of busses. Have clean busses. Make tracking of busses possible. Introduce a congestion tax for all cars and trucks, which is linearly proportional to engine capacity and road length occupied. Have a common transit card across NY and NJ.
Pathway to hell is paved with good intentions and good deeds. Like Free bus rides.
AM💙🏴@bluemoon bus travel free for under 20'sand over 60's here in Scotland and it makes a difference -older people get out and about more, young people can travel to college and work and it reduces cars on road .
garland@bluemoon All great points!
Just one nitpick as a resident of Washington State: I only know of one municipality with fare-free transit, which is Intercity Transit in the Olympia area. All the transit systems in the Seattle area still charge fares. Youth under 18 ride transit free everywhere in the state, which is a start.
Jeremy
Jesse@bluemoon Everywhere that has tried free public transport sees a 30℅ increase in ridership, but no reduction in car use. The 30% increase comes out of active transport so it's a very expensive upkeep cost to get people walking to take the bus instead.
If money is available to make public transport free then that money would be better spent on things that will result in large increases in ridership and actually reduce car usage by expanding the public transport network and running more frequent services.
You can remove the requirement for drivers to enforce fares without removing the fare as most people will still pay it.
Anthony@jessta @bluemoon If you read the whole post you'll see that removing fares comes out to be cost neutral. That means there's still the same amount of money to do whatever thing you want to try, too.
These are the dumbest arguments. Don't do X, because it doesn't help with Y. You can do more than one thing.
The Penguin of Evil@bluemoon @vk6flab The UK we have it in some places for the young, and all over for the over 60s. It's a really good idea because amongst other things many people over 60 often should not be driving.
At that point it would be simpler to extend it to the rest than keep fares.
Historically we had local government owned bus systems that charged mostly token fares and understood that the cost of the buses was less than road widening, pollution, accidents - but that Thatcher destroyed it.
Lynn McAlister UE 
@etchedpixels @bluemoon @vk6flab Watching Thatcher destroy pretty much everything that made life work for people is what finally turned me into a socialist.
Richard W. Woodley ELBOWS UP 🇨🇦🌹🚴♂️📷 🗺️I would think free public transit would be the least controversial since free roads are already taken for granted.
Jo - pièce de résistance
ZenDragoness//RES@bluemoon great text, to the point
@ChrisCorrigan has moved@bluemoon it’s sitting there right in front of us. People aren’t means-tested to use roads. It’s a common good pad for by all of us to enable efficient transportation of people and goods. Transit should just be seen as a part of the road system Free to use for everyone. If you want to operate your own hardware on it, you could pay a premium to do so.
SpudHead (unfunny) (cool??) [0528]
cognitively accessible math@bluemoon Yes. I can make a donation somewhere if I want to pay :P
We have no fare for our campus area and yes, boarding is just so much easier!
We have no fare for our campus area and yes, boarding is just so much easier!