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Free Bus Service Starts Sunday on 5

Routes in New York City
A pilot program experimenting with new ways of making mass
transit more accessible will let riders board without paying for at
least six months.

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Five bus routes, one in each borough of New York City, are slated to be fare free for at
least six months starting on Sunday. Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

By Ana Ley

Sept. 22, 2023

Five New York City bus routes will soon cost nothing to ride as
state leaders join an experiment underway in other cities to attract
more passengers and ease the burden on low-income commuters.

Starting Sunday, one route in each of the city’s boroughs will be

free as part of a pilot program that lawmakers believe will help lift
ridership on mass transit near prepandemic levels .

The free routes are:

the Q4 bus in Queens

the B60 bus in Brooklyn

the M116 bus in Manhattan

the Bx18 bus in the Bronx

the S46 and the S96 buses , which count as one route, on Staten
Island

State leaders said the routes were chosen based on several factors,
including ridership, rates of fare evasion and poverty within
adjacent communities, as well as the access the routes provide to
commercial corridors.

They hope that, in addition to broadening access, the program will

speed up travel times , because riders board more quickly when
they do not pay, and that higher numbers of passengers will make
buses feel safer .

Some lawmakers say that free public transit would especially

benefit the city’s neediest residents, who most heavily depend on
the system. But officials with the Metropolitan Transportation
Authority, which runs the subway and bus network, have said that
a fully free transit system is not possible without replacing billions
in farebox revenue.
Other cities have introduced free bus service that has resulted in
faster travel times. Boston made three of its bus routes free in
March 2022 , expanding an existing trial program, and Kansas
City’s entire transit system went fare-free in 2020.

In New York City t he free rides program will benefit about 44,000
daily riders , representing a fraction of the bus network’s roughly
1.3 million weekday riders .

New York’s pilot program was scaled back from an original plan to
suspend fares on ten bus routes. Some lawmakers had hoped for a
bigger investment than the $15 million funding the pilot program,
which will span at least six months and could extend as long as a
year.

They say that the experiment doesn’t go far enough and that the
state should be working toward fully subsidizing the entire transit
system. The argument is that there should be no cost to ride public
transit, just as there is no charge to attend public school or receive
police assistance.

“If you want to move New York better, if you want New York to be
safer, if you want New Yorkers to have more access, then free
public transportation is the answer,” Assemblywoman Phara
Souffrant Forrest, a Brooklyn Democrat, said during a news
conference on Wednesday about the pilot program. “We need all
the lines free.”

It is unclear whether the state will invest more money in the

program to widen its reach, and the M.T.A. has not lobbied
lawmakers to do so.

Asked whether the M.T.A. would ever make every bus free, Janno
Lieber, the authority’s chairman, has said that without offsetting
billions in lost fares, it would be impossible.

“We’re doing our best to get information from the free bus routes to
see what we can all learn about it,” Mr. Lieber said. “But there’s no
money in the M.T.A. budget for suddenly giving up bus revenue.”

Before this year’s budget , New York’s transit system faced a fiscal
disaster brought on by the pandemic. Albany’s latest budget
included an increase in the payroll tax paid by the city’s big
businesses, which is expected to generate about $1.1 billion for the
authority, among other changes that will allocate more revenue for
the authority.

The city’s subway and bus ridership fell more than 90 percent
during the pandemic. And while ridership has partially rebounded,
commuting patterns have changed with the proliferation of remote
work, and currently, bus ridership is at about 60 percent of
prepandemic levels.

The authority temporarily made buses free at the height of the

coronavirus pandemic. But the M.T.A. has since ramped up fare
evasion enforcement in order to recoup what officials say are
hundreds of millions of dollars it loses each year because many
people do not pay to ride.

Advocates tempered their enthusiasm for the free bus pilot by

urging Mayor Eric Adams to deliver on a promise to create more
dedicated lanes in order to speed up the city’s notoriously slow
buses. They also urged Mr. Adams to significantly expand
eligibility requirements for the city’s Fair Fares program , which
subsidizes public transit fares for New Yorkers whose income falls
below the federal poverty line.

A City Hall spokesman noted that Mr. Adams pushed for the free
bus pilot and pointed to the city’s work to increase its annual
budget for the Fair Fares program from $75 million to $95 million.
 Charles Lutvak, the spokesman, said in an email: “The
administration continues to do everything we can to meet the
ambitious goals that the mayor laid out in his campaign.”

Ana Ley is a Metro reporter covering transit in New York. Before joining The Times, she
worked at newspapers in Texas, Las Vegas and Virginia. More about Ana Ley
A version of this article appears in print on Sept. 23, 2023 , Section A , Page 19 of the New York edition with the
headline: Free Bus Rides Start Sunday on Five New York City Routes, One in Each Borough . Order Reprints | Today’s
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