Zohran Mamdani’s ‘free buses’ are a dangerous mistake — we’ve seen how they fail

(by Nathan Willett (R), Kansas City’s City Council and Nicholas Miller, president of ATU #1287, KC’s local union representing bus operators) — New York City, take this as a warning: The “free bus” program that Zohran Mamdani has made a key part of his platform in his campaign for mayor is a proven failure.

We have seen it with our own eyes in our home town, Kansas City, Mo., which launched a fare-free bus program in 2020 — and pulled the plug on it this year.

We saw the degradation riders experienced under our city’s Zero Fare initiative, and spoke to our bus operators about the many problems it caused.

In 2024, Mamdani wrote an article for The Nation that praised Kansas City’s program as a successful model for a big-city bus system.

He claimed it gave working-class residents “economic breathing room while also making their commute safer,” citing one year’s worth of data from the experiment.  But Mamdani didn’t include data past 2020 — because the safety metrics on our city’s bus system are alarming.

Assaults on bus operators prior to 2020, when Zero Fare first launched, averaged about one or two annually.

After introducing no-fare transit, the incidents increased dramatically.  In 2020, there were 14 attacks on operators; in 2021, 15; in 2022, 17; and in 2023, 25.  Five years into our free-fare program, in 2024, bus operators faced a record 32 assaults.

Previously, charging a fare acted as a means of filtering out folks prone to causing major disturbances on the bus.  That tool is no longer available.

Zero-Fare has brought us more loop riding — that is, folks getting on our buses and riding for hours with no destination, just to get off the street and out of the weather  — and an increase in intoxicated passengers, both of which have created unsanitary conditions on the buses and around bus stops.

The alarming data is backed up by the operators themselves.

When Nathan rode along with drivers on the bus system last fall, every one of them acknowledged the environment of the bus is not as safe as it used to be.

The next day, we attended a member meeting of the Amalgamated Transit Union to gain a broader perspective. About 40 operators were present, ranging from veterans to rookies.

We asked a simple question: Raise your hand if you want to reimplement the fare.  Every single member instantly raised their hand.  These dedicated drivers no longer felt in control of their buses.

It was heartbreaking to hear 30-plus-year veterans, once proud of their profession, say they believed they were now running dangerous homeless shelters on wheels.

That feeling extends to many Kansas City residents.  People who used to ride the bus for daily tasks like grocery shopping no longer do so because taking a fare-free bus makes them feel so unsafe.

In 2019, the last year we charged a fare, the Kansas City system tallied 972 bus disturbances.

In 2020, the first year of the free fare, the number rose to 1,460 — followed by 2,187 disturbances in 2021.

The sharply increasing problems forced KCATA, our local transit authority, to hire seven times the normal number of security personnel — and then, for the first time, to arm those guards.

Even after adding expensive security measures, the system has never seen fewer than 1,300 disturbances a year, a 30% increase in on-bus altercations since the implementation of Zero Fares.

Our buses simply are not safer, whatever Mamdani may say.

At least the candidate didn’t try to claim that KC’s bus system ran faster or more efficiently during its five no-fare years.

Regional partners have eliminated bus routes due to rising costs and safety concerns — and Kansas City is now grappling with the possibility of cutting routes, after losing $10 million a year in revenue from fares and shelling out $6 million in extra security expenditures.

And this is what Mamdani called a “resounding success.”

Earlier this year, my council colleagues finally listened to our bus operators, community members and the data — and admitted Zero Fares was a failure.  The council voted to require KCATA to reimplement fares early next year (2026). [Note: Low-income residents, veterans, students, and those receiving social service assistance will still be able to ride for free. However, due to the huge loss in revenue, the frequency of many bus routes will be reduced, and operational hours may be shortened].

Kansas City learned that Zero Fare, like the other socialistic policies Mamdani is proposing for New York, had dire real-life consequences that are never contemplated at the Democratic Socialists’ organizing meetings.

New York City, take heed: Mamdani is wrong.  Free fares won’t make buses faster or safer — and will cost you plenty in the long run.

Nathan Willett is a Republican member of  Kansas City’s City Council. Nicholas Miller is president of ATU #1287, KC’s local union representing bus operators.