Zohran Mamdani should get the hint and scrap his proposal for New York City.
T he cities of Albuquerque and New York don’t have a great deal in common. One is a densely packed East Coast metropolis, while the other is a relatively spread out (and much smaller) city in the American Southwest.
But they do have one thing in common: Politicians in both cities have bought into the idea of making buses “free” to riders. Of course, we know that there is no such thing as “free,” and the costs are ultimately borne by taxpayers. Free fares were implemented in Albuquerque, N.M., as a pilot program on January 1, 2022, and then made permanent in November of 2023. In New York City, the idea has been put forth by self-avowed socialist mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani.
Free buses may seem like an innovative way to get more people to ride struggling transit systems, which have lost ridership for years, but New York can learn a lot from the failure of Albuquerque’s taxpayer-funded “free” bus program.
The program has led to major safety issues on city buses. The most obvious impact of letting people ride buses without paying so much as $1 (the previous fare in Albuquerque) has been that the city’s homeless population has flocked to the buses. With homeless people hopping aboard to just relax while riding or to stay out of heat, cold, or Albuquerque’s occasional rainstorms, the city’s buses have become rolling homeless shelters, and not only that.
In 2023 when the program was just getting started, Albuquerque media reported that the city’s “free” buses were being used as getaway vehicles for shoplifters. While there has not been much reporting on this topic since the initial stories, I have talked with numerous business owners who say it is still a problem. The addition of security guards on buses has undoubtedly caused criminals to think twice, but it has not solved the problem.
In 2023, former New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas, a Democrat, said, “I think that the no fee for riders seemed like a well-intentioned policy, but there must be safety requirements. In other words, you can’t just let everyone on the bus with stolen equipment.”
Around that time, Albuquerque police undertook a sting operation around shoplifting in Albuquerque called “Operation Sticky Fingers” and found that “ten of the 31 people arrested used a city bus,” which led the Albuquerque Journal to editorialize that “abuse of the city’s free bus fare program is now indisputable.” One city councilor cited a 25 percent increase in police calls at buses and bus stops since the pilot program went into effect. In addition to shoplifting, drugs are a problem on Albuquerque’s buses. Twelve of the 31 people arrested were reportedly found with drugs or paraphernalia on them, mostly related to fentanyl. The same is true with assaults and other physical safety challenges. A Transit Department spokeswoman said nine bus drivers who quit in 2022 cited the free fares program and concerns over safety. There were 86 vacant driver positions in December of 2022.
An attempt was made back then by some on the city council to require riders to acquire a free pass or show government ID to ride the bus. To date, such proposals have not been adopted because of free-bus advocates’ concerns over “equity.”
The lack of willing bus drivers led to demands for increased security on Albuquerque’s buses. That security doesn’t come cheap, and with local police departments struggling to hire officers, the issue is not simply a financial one.
As of July 2025, the city’s Transit Department was working to hire 25 new security guards. The plan is to ultimately bring that number up to 87. It says something that, during the state fair earlier this month, Albuquerque used a combination of private security guards and National Guard troops to assist with security on the buses.
So, have “free” buses led to a transit renaissance in Albuquerque as advocates would like to believe (and Mamdani believes will happen in New York)? It doesn’t seem so.
In 2019 before the Covid pandemic, Albuquerque bus ridership was just over 9 million passengers. That was down from the 10 million who rode city buses in 2016. After plummeting to 4.4 million in 2021, ridership rebounded to 7 million in 2024. That’s a far cry from peak ridership of less than a decade ago or even pre-pandemic.
Did the “free” buses lead to this slight rebound, or has ridership actually been hampered by safety issues on Albuquerque’s zero-fare buses? Again, it is difficult to say, but a drop from 9 million to 7 million represents a fall of 22 percent. It is hard to call that success.
Making New York’s buses “free” would likely create many of the same problems that we’ve seen in Albuquerque, despite the two cities’ manifest differences. There are many reasons to query Mamdani’s socialist approach to governance, but even transit users who might theoretically benefit from zero bus fares should be wary.