New York Metropolis, take this as a warning: The “free bus” program that Zohran Mamdani has made a key a part of his platform in his marketing campaign for mayor is a confirmed failure.
We now have seen it with our personal eyes in our residence city, Kansas Metropolis, Mo., which launched a fare-free bus program in 2020 — and pulled the plug on it this yr.
We noticed the degradation riders skilled beneath our metropolis’s Zero Fare initiative, and spoke to our bus operators in regards to the many issues it brought on.
In 2024, Mamdani wrote an article for The Nation that praised Kansas Metropolis’s program as a profitable mannequin for a big-city bus system.
He claimed it gave working-class residents “financial respiration room whereas additionally making their commute safer,” citing one yr’s value of knowledge from the experiment.
However Mamdani didn’t embrace knowledge previous 2020 — as a result of the protection metrics on our metropolis’s bus system are alarming.
Assaults on bus operators previous to 2020, when Zero Fare first launched, averaged about one or two yearly.
After introducing no-fare transit, the incidents elevated dramatically.
In 2020, there have been 14 assaults on operators; in 2021, 15; in 2022, 17; and in 2023, 25.
5 years into our free-fare program, in 2024, bus operators confronted a file 32 assaults.
Beforehand, charging a fare acted as a way of filtering out of us liable to inflicting main disturbances on the bus.
That instrument is now not accessible.
Zero-Fare has introduced us extra loop using — that’s, of us getting on our buses and using for hours with no vacation spot, simply to get off the road and out of the climate — and a rise in intoxicated passengers, each of which have created unsanitary situations on the buses and round bus stops.
The alarming knowledge is backed up by the operators themselves.
When Nathan rode together with drivers on the bus system final fall, each one among them acknowledged the setting of the bus shouldn’t be as secure because it was.
The subsequent day, we attended a member assembly of the Amalgamated Transit Union to realize a broader perspective. About 40 operators had been current, starting from veterans to rookies.
We requested a easy query: Increase your hand if you wish to reimplement the fare.
Each single member immediately raised their hand.
These devoted drivers now not felt answerable for their buses.
It was heartbreaking to listen to 30-plus-year veterans, as soon as happy with their occupation, say they believed they had been now working harmful homeless shelters on wheels.
That feeling extends to many Kansas Metropolis residents.
Individuals who used to journey the bus for day by day duties like grocery buying now not accomplish that as a result of taking a fare-free bus makes them really feel so unsafe.
In 2019, the final yr we charged a fare, the Kansas Metropolis system tallied 972 bus disturbances.
In 2020, the primary yr of the free fare, the quantity rose to 1,460 — adopted by 2,187 disturbances in 2021.
The sharply growing issues compelled KCATA, our native transit authority, to rent seven instances the traditional variety of safety personnel — after which, for the primary time, to arm these guards.
Even after including costly safety measures, the system has by no means seen fewer than 1,300 disturbances a yr, a 30% enhance in on-bus altercations for the reason that implementation of Zero Fares.
Our buses merely will not be safer, no matter Mamdani could say.
At the very least the candidate didn’t attempt to declare that KC’s bus system ran sooner or extra effectively throughout its 5 no-fare years.
Regional companions have eradicated bus routes as a result of rising prices and security issues — and Kansas Metropolis is now grappling with the potential for reducing routes, after shedding $10 million a yr in income from fares and shelling out $6 million in further safety expenditures.
And that is what Mamdani known as a “resounding success.”
Earlier this yr, my council colleagues lastly listened to our bus operators, group members and the information — and admitted Zero Fares was a failure.
The council voted to require KCATA to reimplement fares early subsequent yr.
Kansas Metropolis realized that Zero Fare, like the opposite socialistic insurance policies Mamdani is proposing for New York, had dire real-life penalties which are by no means contemplated on the Democratic Socialists’ organizing conferences.
New York Metropolis, take heed: Mamdani is mistaken.
Free fares received’t make buses sooner or safer — and can value you loads in the long term.
Nathan Willett is a Republican member of Kansas Metropolis’s Metropolis Council. Nicholas Miller is president of ATU #1287, KC’s native union representing bus operators.
