MTA Chair and CEO Janno Lieber told city lawmakers that no one has spoken to him about Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s reported plan for a free bus pilot program during the FIFA World Cup this summer. Tuesday, March 17, 2026.
Credit John McCarten/NYC Council Media Unit
MTA Chair and CEO Janno Lieber insisted on Tuesday that “nobody” in city or state government has asked him about Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration’s reported proposal to test out fare-free buses across the city during the FIFA World Cup this summer.
During a March 17 City Council budget hearing in which MTA brass took questions from city lawmakers, Lieber denied that anyone had approached him about eliminating fares on city buses during the five-week soccer championship event that is expected to bring 1.2 million visitors to the New York and New Jersey region this summer.
“Honestly, I haven’t been asked that by anybody,” Lieber said. “We’re not going to study things that are … not on the agenda of the city and the state and other power players.”
Although Lieber said he had not spoken to anyone about the proposal, he appeared to mock the idea during the Tuesday hearing, implying that it amounts to subsidizing public transit for tourists with money to burn rather than financially strapped New Yorkers.
“Nobody’s asked me to give free buses to people who are paying $1,000 a ticket from other countries,” Lieber said.
A City Hall spokesperson did not return a request for comment.
Lieber’s remarks came in response to City Council Transportation Chair Shaun Abreu’s question about the proposal, which first surfaced in Daily News and New York Times reports last month. The reports, which cited anonymous sources, indicated that Mamdani’s team was pitching the plan to Gov. Kathy Hochul’s. The governor is in charge of the state-run MTA.
A Hochul spokesperson did not comment on Lieber’s remarks.
Both outlets reported that Mamdani’s team was asking Hochul’s to include funding for the pilot in the state budget, a fiscal plan that must be approved by an April 1 deadline in order to considered on time.
Making buses fare-free citywide was a key component of Mamdani’s successful mayoral campaign last year; he also pitched a limited-time pilot program to test the idea on a smaller scale. However, Hochul has not embraced Mamdani’s free bus proposal, while Lieber has been publicly skeptical of it.
The MTA boss has said he is concerned that making buses free across the board would amount to subsidizing rides for people who can afford to pay the fare and prefers the city’s Fair Fares means-tested discounted fare program instead. He has also questioned Mamdani’s $700 million-a-year cost estimate for the initiative, noting it would be closer to $1 billion annually.
Fare box revenue from city buses helps fund the MTA’s $21 billion operating budget.
Lieber said that making buses free must be thoroughly studied before the state and city can move forward with making it a reality.
“This is an idea which has, I understand, you know, great appeal, but hasn’t really been studied,” Lieber told lawmakers during the hearing. “We have a sacred system in New York that we depend on: our mass transit system. It makes New York possible. And I am, I have concerns that we ought to be studying any of these huge transformational ideas much more thoroughly before we consider expansion.”
Mamdani’s campaign proposal grew out of another pilot program that made five buses across the city — one route in each borough — free between 2023 and 2024. The program ended in September 2024 after the legislature declined to renew it and the MTA cast it as a failure.
Last week, both the state Senate and Assembly included proposals to resurrect and expand the same free bus pilot.
