"Zohran Mamdani placed New York City's buses at the center of his mayoral campaign, promising to make them both fast and free. While the mayor-elect will have a long menu of options to speed up the notoriously slow system, his wish to eliminate bus fares will take more time and money than he likely anticipated - but for none of the reasons that critics have already identified."
"Critically missing from the discourse on free buses, however, are the implications a fare-free system would have for the MTA's Access-A-Ride, the local paratransit program established by the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. Access-a-Ride provides more than 40,000 daily trips on weekdays to eligible riders with disabilities. Ridership has risen to 140 percent of pre-COVID levels and the MTA expects annual ridership to reach more than 9.5 million trips by 2027."
Zohran Mamdani prioritized making New York City buses both faster and fare-free. Fast buses can be achieved through dedicated busways, transit signal priority, improved stops, and political support at Gracie Mansion. Previous administrations paused projects after local or federal pushback, leaving room for renewed implementation of the DOT’s Better Buses and the NYC Streets Plan. A fare-free policy would directly affect the MTA’s Access-a-Ride paratransit program, which serves over 40,000 weekday trips and is growing toward an expected 9.5 million annual trips by 2027. Access-a-Ride currently carries a roughly $700 million annual budget split largely to the city.
Read at Streetsblog
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]