Last week, Metropolitan Transportation Authority chief Janno Lieber pointed to one culprit behind the steep deficits that loom for the state-run transit system: Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s free-bus push, which spurred more people to stop paying.
Gov. Kathy Hochul will have to use her leverage to neutralize the mayor’s rhetoric — and to fix the upcoming $22.8 billion MTA budget for 2027, whose woes aren’t Mamdani’s fault, but hers.
Lieber is right that bus-fare evasion is a crisis: With more than 48% of riders not paying, it’s nearly five times the rate of subway evasion.
Yet the NYPD and the MTA had been making progress (respectively) via uniformed and civilian enforcement of fare rules: Evasion inched down from above 51% two years ago, before Mamdani won office last fall.
As Lieber said Wednesday, “All the talk of free buses, it does have an impact . . . I’m not blaming anyone, I’m not telling anyone to shut up.”
It’s no surprise that the mayor who wants the buses to be free doesn’t care that people aren’t paying for them.
As Mamdani said in July, with Hochul and Lieber looking on, “We’ll continue not only to believe, but to work towards making our bus system free as well.”
This year, NYPD tickets for theft of services on the bus are down 73%.
But the MTA’s fiscal problems go beyond Mamdani.
Its spending update last week was a blowout: Next year’s budget will be up 13% compared to two years ago.
Just since February’s projection, a $160 million deficit for next year has nearly doubled, to $295 million.
By 2028, the deficit will top half a billion — and nearly $900 million by 2030.
Finance chief Jai Patel warned of that old bogeyman: “structural cost pressures.”
Health benefits for workers and retirees are the biggest propellant, up 52% since 2019, to $3 billion in 2027.
But the biggest problem here is the governor, as the costs of the settlement of the May weekend LIRR strike become clear.
The authority had wanted to hold annual raises for its workforce to 2%, as it engages now in talks with the Transport Workers Union, which staffs subways and buses.
But it undermined its stance when it settled the railroad strike with a 3.8% raise for the current year, which the TWU will want to match.
These extra costs could consume nearly $200 million a year.
At the same time as Hochul caved to the LIRR, she expanded pension benefits for transit workers hired after the 2008 financial crisis, who were required to pay more into pensions and retire later.
Now, the MTA will have to pay an additional $30 million a year.
You might think, here we go again with fare and toll hikes.
But the MTA is already accounting for a two 4% fare and toll hikes over the next three years.
The congestion-pricing toll is also rising in 2028, from $9 to $12.
That extra money will fall short.
Only one person can save the MTA, and it’s not the mayor.
Hochul has three tasks:
First, tell the public that free buses are never going to happen.
Yes, she held the line this year, when Mamdani was at the height of his political power.
But she needs to be clear that her “not right now” attitude is never.
The MTA is in no position to give up $1.1 billion a year.
Second, until riders get the message, she must supervise an all-out focus on bus evasion.
NYPD officers can support the MTA’s civilian teams, which recently started an initiative to ask people for proof of payment while on board the bus by tapping their OMNY or credit card against a handheld machine.
If Mamdani’s NYPD doesn’t have enough officers to help, she can direct him to add them, with the money he will need from the state for next year’s city budget as leverage.
Finally, she must — if belatedly — hold the line on union raises.
Any wage gains must come with labor efficiencies, including a curtailment of bus-driver sick time — which is harming service.
Hochul is vulnerable on the MTA budget: She is the governor who launched congestion pricing, promised for decades by advocates to be transformational.
Absent cost fixes, it’s just another toll or tax among the MTA’s $12.4 billion worth of annual taxes and tolls, from payroll to sales taxes.
Mamdani’s not going to shut up — but Hochul can ensure that his words are irrelevant.
Nicole Gelinas is a contributing editor to the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
