Posted on 11/02/2026 6:15:42 AM PST by Libloather
It looks like Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s getting a wish-granted monkey-paw style: MTA buses are now de-facto free — at the price of making them increasingly dangerous and blowing a disastrous hole in the agency’s finances.
Not to mention the larger consequence of surrendering to farebeating.
MTA chief Janno Leiber last week suspended the EAGLE fare-verification program after a couple of ugly incidents, presumably under political orders not to upset the anti-policing left.
And NYPD flacks say the cops have “no plans” to step in; officers haven’t been issuing more than handful of farebeating summonses for some time, and the city’s district attorneys have given up on prosecuting them.
Few bus drivers are in any position to enforce; it means risking their lives.
With nothing making anyone pay, ever-fewer riders are.
Fare-skipping bus riders cost the agency $568 million in 2024, estimates the nonpartisan Citizens Budget Commission; 2025 was likely worse.
And that’s not just an immediate hit to the agency’s bottom line: Its finances also depend on regularly issuing bonds backed by expected fare collections.
With bus revenues rushing to zero, who’s going to bid much when the MTA attempts its next bond auction in a few weeks?
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
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Free crap really is crap seems more fitting for this story.
Well, the good news is that it will reduce the homeless burden on the libraries. Why sit in a library when you can ride the bus all over the place.
And your bus ride will be worth every penny.
They are running out of other peoples money.......................
Without charging fares, these buses will be little more than rolling shelters for homeless people.
“Well, the good news is that it will reduce the homeless burden on the libraries. Why sit in a library when you can ride the bus all over the place.”
Not really. The buses don’t have much of a homeless problem. If they are going to use public transport as shelter they use subway.
I think perhaps you miss the point
They are not homeless. They are bus dwellers
It sounds like if you rude their transit, you may need to be armed.
That sounds exciting.
“Ride” = “rude”
Typo.
Just imagine when the first sane mayor takes over NYC. He or she is going to be faced with an MTA that has no viable buses or subway rolling stock; they all will be broken down and dilapidated shelters for the homeless. The new mayor will need to invest a massive amount of money in them to get them to the point where they are clean, safe and secure enough for average, working New York City residents to use them again. This is always the case with Socialism. It is like a locust that eats away and destroys what prior generations built up and leaves future generations nothing other than the need to rebuild from the wreckage.
The new subcategory of the "unhoused" are the "unvehicled".
They can have build social workers' stations right into the design of new buses.
Instead of bicycle racks on the front of the busess, they can add racks for shopping carts.
Add stops at liquor stores, soup kitchens, and the morgue.
One thing I have noticed about MTA busses in Manhattan, at least, is how efficient they are at navigating the crowded streets. The drivers are aggressive, to say the least, which is exactly what’s needed in that congested traffic. They are well aware of how imposing their diesel behemoths are to all smaller vehicles and they use it to their best advantage.
Exactly.
Buying a depreciating asset is not an investment.
It's an expense.
They have their own bus lanes. They have no problems navigating.
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