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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.
Continue reading the entire piece here at The New York Post
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Nicole Gelinas is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a contributing editor of City Journal, and a contributing opinion writer at the New York Times.