Albany’s Free Ride Surged Transit Use, but NYC’s Buses Face a Steeper Hill

New York’s debate over free bus fares recalls an earlier, largely forgotten experiment in Albany—raising questions about what such a policy might portend for America’s largest city.

On a chilly morning in 1978, the Freewheeler—a city bus emblazoned with bold signage advertising a $0 fare—rattled down Albany’s State Street, ferrying state workers, local residents, and the odd tourist to the heart of New York’s capital. The buses, backed by a $326,000 federal grant, had a straightforward aim: to test whether scrapping fares might boost ridership and reshape downtown travel patterns. Four decades later, this modest experiment is being invoked in a far grander context—New York City, where a swelling chorus of progressive lawmakers is pressing for a new pilot that would let riders board certain city buses free.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani and his allies in Albany have made the free bus vision a central plank of New York’s transit debate. Their proposal, currently hung up in state budget negotiations now running more than two weeks overdue, would greenlight a study of eliminating fares on select bus lines across the five boroughs. Supporters tout it as a necessary step towards a fairer, greener and more accessible city transit system.

Many New Yorkers already view the city’s $2.90 bus fare as a meaningful burden—especially amidst tepid wage growth and persistent inflation. Door-to-door subway and bus trips still take considerably longer than direct car journeys, burdening workers who cannot shell out for a taxi or rideshare. Paring down this cost of mobility, argue Mamdani and backers, would particularly benefit lower-wage New Yorkers, helping knit together economically segregated neighbourhoods and boost spending at local businesses.

But not everyone is convinced, least of all transit heavyweight Janno Lieber, chair of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA). The authority runs the city’s 5,800-strong bus fleet, which, as Lieber reminds his critics, moves some two million passengers every weekday—most of them already benefiting from discounted fares, multi-ride passes, or subsidies for seniors and students. “We don’t necessarily think that free buses is the right way to do it,” Lieber told reporters last month, hinting that if affordability is the goal, targeted subsidies may have a stronger case.

The Albany example underlines the complexity of the matter. The Freewheeler’s fare-free window, restricted to off-peak hours and a circumscribed downtown loop, drove a striking jump in ridership numbers: weekday off-peak boardings tripled, surging from an average of 1,070 to over 3,000. On Saturdays, ridership nearly quintupled. But this upsurge did not conjure a flood of new downtown visitors. Instead, existing residents and workers simply rejigged their journeys—bus rides supplanted walking rather than driving, with driver mileage dropping only marginally (some 353 fewer miles each day), barely registering on the pollution meter.

Any social and economic gains were similarly modest but not negligible. Local businesses reported a 4.9% uptick in sales-tax receipts, suggesting that free bus fares did more to redistribute transit choices among city dwellers than to generate a dramatic boom. For policymakers in New York City, this hints that a fareless bus policy may deliver benefits primarily in equity and convenience, rather than in traffic relief or environmental dividends.

In New York, the numbers are vastly bigger. The MTA collects roughly $800 million annually in bus fares. Plunging this stream to zero without a reliable compensation scheme would leave a gaping hole, potentially requiring trade-offs on service, payroll, or capital upgrades. The city’s buses, already infamous for their ponderous progress (average speeds below 8 mph), risk further overcrowding if free service boosts demand faster than resources can adjust.

Opponents also observe that fare elimination could have perverse effects. If bus rides substitute for walking or short cycling trips, broader health and climate benefits may evaporate. A system unable to sustain higher ridership with existing funding could see service deteriorate, with longer waits and less reliable journeys—dampening precisely the inclusion and mobility goals that free fares seek to advance.

A national movement, with local nuance

Yet the free-fare idea enjoys a certain intellectual momentum. Cities from Kansas City to Boston have trialled no-cost bus programs in recent years, with results as mixed as Albany’s. In Boston, a pilot on a handful of routes yielded significant ridership jumps but also mixed evidence of wider traffic or environmental impact. Kansas City’s experiment has been credited for improving access for the working poor, but not for slashing car use. European peers—a Nordic coterie, Luxembourg—have found much the same: abolishing fares is popular, but expensive, and may underwhelm in shifting the basic physics of urban travel.

New York, ever the outlier, faces stricter constraints than many of its peers. The city’s vast bus network serves a tapestry of density, geography, and need that defies one-size-fits-all fixes. With state finances under perennial strain, and a labyrinthine governance structure (the MTA is a state, not purely city, agency), change is more tortuous here than in smaller metro areas.

Still, the underlying impulse behind the proposal is not easily dismissed. Making city streets less hostile to those without cars is a policy aim that bodes well for social mobility and urban cohesion. If policymakers can design a tightly targeted, data-driven pilot that actively monitors costs, equity benefits, and unintended consequences, New York might glean lessons worth far more than a seat on the Freewheeler.

The sensible approach, we reckon, is incremental: analyse routes where fares are most exclusionary, test carefully, and adjust. Fare abolition should not be fetishised as a cure-all. Rather, it is another lever—tentatively promising in some settings, fraught in others. Should free buses nudge New York toward fairer and more accessible streets, the cost may be justified. But nostalgia alone is a poor basis for urban reform. ■