cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/43191242
Feb. 13, 2026
Free 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.
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.
Don’t think of it as a giveaway to the undeserving
Imagine even thinking this about bus fares, when there’s corporate welfare, subsidies, bailouts, and a tax code that heavily favours the wealthy.
I’m all for taxing the wealthy and using that money to fund public services.
Is it that people ride the bus?
I’ll bet it’s that people ride the bus.
My dad retired a few years ago, he spent basically his whole life driving to work and anywhere else he needed to go himself.
Where we live, senior citizens can get a pass so they don’t have to pay bus or train fare.
So now he takes the bus everywhere, sometimes he basically just goes and rides it for fun, doesn’t really even go anywhere in particular, just gets on a bus and rides around for a bit, gets off at some random stop, and waits around for a bus going back the way he came from.
Weird hobby, but I guess it beats collecting stamps.
So I think that makes a pretty compelling case. If you make it free, people will use it
This is a great hobby 😊
If he starts to show signs of dementia you need to show him how to share his location with you guys by default. This hobby sounds like it could make something stressful even more stressful if not prepared.
Thankfully, this hobby would help stave off dimentia if onsetting, as it is highly cognitive and forces an amount of exercise 🙂
Locally, our transit system gets most of it’s funding from a payroll tax on all the businesses in the Tri-County area (why it’s called “Tri-Met”, Multnomah, Washington, and Clackamas counties.)
https://trimet.org/budget/pdf/2025-adopted-budget.pdf
$62.4 million from passenger revenue.
$540.4 million from payroll tax.The payroll tax is 0.8237%.
So…
0.8237/$540,400,000
x/$602,800,000Solve for x…
0.8237 x 602,800,000 = 496,526,360
496,526,360 / 540,400,000 = 0.9188126573So if we increased the payroll tax 0.0951126573, an amount absolutely nobody would notice, we could make our mass transit system here free.
You should also take into account that expenses are reduced because the need for payment infrastructure and processing disappears.
Plus the millions cities like NYC waste catching and prosecuting gate jumpers
While all that is true, at least in Portland it will be partially off-set by the need for added security.
We ALREADY see it as is with the paid system, it would just get worse in a free system:
Whatever city simulation game you use, it is usually better to make public transit free, and it pays on the long run. I wonder why…
