Zohran Mamdani’s simplistic solution to “just make it free” may sound appealing, but it fails to withstand the slightest scrutiny.
out-raising every other candidatePerhaps 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.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.
Both rely on a misrepresentation of a single data point — and that’s just one of the broader argument’s flaws.Mamdani’s post cited an article in The Chief, a city public-union journal, stating that bus operators experienced a 39.8% reduction in all types of assaultsMeanwhile, during the same period, the entire bus system saw a 19.8% decline in such incidents.
By implying that fare evasion correlates with antisocial behavior like verbal and physical assaults, Mamdani has unwittingly acknowledged a reality that proponents of fare-evasion enforcement have been highlighting for decades: That those who evade fares areharmless, marginalized individuals just seeking transportation access, but often deeply antisocial thugs liable to assault hard-working bus operators over a $3 fare.
Portland, Ore., for one, reversed course in 2012 after making part of its public transit system free. Why? Mamdani’s argument for expanding free transit based on such limited and shielded data is both unsupported and dangerous, and handing out free services is neither a rational nor moral response to bad behavior.
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