MTA’s boss tapped the brakes on Zohran Mamdani’s key campaign promise to provide free buses across the Big Apple — criticizing the plan as half-baked and much more expensive than proposed.
“I want to make sure that people of limited income get priority in this discussion and we’re not just giving a ton of money to people who ride the 104 on the Upper West Side,” MTA CEO Janno Lieber said on NY1 Wednesday morning.
The MTA head also said the cost the campaign has associated with the free bus programs — $700 million each year — was underestimated.
“They’re looking at fare box revenue that we got from buses last year and so on. But you know, our projection is that that bus revenue is going to start to push closer to a billion dollars a year in the next couple of years,” he said.
Lieber said the policy idea pushed by the Democratic Socialist lawmaker and current mayoral frontrunner also needed to have numerous stages of analysis and review, suggesting any implementation could be years away.
“Any change of the scale that’s being talked about, taking a section of our incredibly important transit system and changing it entirely, has to be studied,” Lieber added. “We studied congestion pricing for five years, and when we implemented it, we knew where there might be impacts.”
But Lieber also raised the issue of more people taking the buses instead of the subways as a result and pointed to another reason for studies.
“What’s not being discussed is the possibility that, if a lot more people are riding the bus,” he said. “Are we going to need more busses? Are we going to need more bus drivers? Will we need extra depots? What will be the impact on subway fare revenue if everyone moves to the but or some people move to the bus, right?
“Those need to be studied.”
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