
NYC Mayoral Hopeful’s Free-Fare Gimmick: It’s an Illogical Path to Fight Transit Crime
New York City mayoral hopeful Zohran Mamdani is out-raising every other candidate in the race — by pledging to spend even more of taxpayers’ money.
Among his more expensive promises is his cornerstone proposal to eliminate fares on all MTA buses. Free transit for everyone!
Perhaps anticipating some pushback from the fiscally sane, Mamdani on Tuesday offered up a whopper of a rationale for the $700M proposal: It could reduce assaults on bus drivers, he asserted on X.
His evidence?
A (very) small pilot program that made five city bus routes free for a year.
According to Mamdani, those routes saw nearly 40% fewer verbal and physical assaults on drivers during that time, while the rest of the system saw a 20% decline.
The claim that this program led to a significant reduction in assaults on operators is baseless, as is the candidate’s proposal to expand free fares as a crime-fighting measure.
Continue reading the entire piece here at the New York Post
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Rafael Mangual is the Nick Ohnell Fellow and head of research for the Policing and Public Safety Initiative at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. He is also the author of Criminal (In)Justice: What the Push for Decarceration and Depolicing Gets Wrong and Who It Hurts Most.
Photo by Mostafa Bassim/Anadolu via Getty Images