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Long before New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani pushed for fast and free buses, the city of Albany had the Freewheeler.
Mamdani’s allies at the state Capitol are pushing for a new pilot program to study the effects of eliminating the bus fare in parts of the city.
Back in the 1970s, they could’ve just looked out the window.
More than a decade before Mamdani was even born, the streets of Downtown Albany were filled with free buses. They whizzed by the Capitol and other government offices on a regular basis, all thanks to a $326,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation to study how eliminating bus fare affects ridership.
The Freewheeler buses — yes, that’s what they were called — ran during daytime, off-peak hours on routes running through Albany’s central business district from 1978 through 1980. (During peak hours, the regular fare was 40 cents.)
Ridership went through the roof. Three times as many people rode the bus during off-peak hours during the work week when fares were eliminated — a jump from 1,070 daily average riders before the pilot program took effect to 3,040, according to a 1981 federal study. On Saturdays, it was a fivefold increase, from 270 to 1,340.
The study showed the free buses didn’t bring more people to Downtown Albany. Instead, people simply shifted their travel habits.
Workers and residents who had been accustomed to hiking up Downtown Albany’s steep State Street hill hopped on the bus instead. Downtown residents made fewer trips by car, though not by much — about 353 fewer car miles per day, not enough to make a meaningful reduction in emissions, according to the report.
But still, Downtown Albany businesses reported an uptick in business during the pilot program. Sales-tax receipts within the central business district were up 4.9% compared to the two years before the program went into effect.
These days, Democrats in the state Legislature are trying to convince Gov. Kathy Hochul to support a similar free bus pilot program for New York City in the state budget, which is now more than two weeks late. They see it as a key first step toward achieving Mamdani’s broader vision of free buses across the five boroughs.
Hochul hasn’t committed to supporting another free bus program. And she’s hearing opposition from a key ally: MTA Chair and CEO Janno Lieber.
“We're really pushing affordability,” Lieber told Gothamist in an interview at the Capitol last month. “We don't necessarily think that free buses is the right way to do it. The overwhelming majority of New Yorkers are actually riding the subway or a combination of bus and subway and they wouldn't get the benefit of any free bus — let alone a free bus pilot.”
If lawmakers are successful, it would be New York City’s second free bus pilot in the last three years.
A pilot program pushed by then-Assemblymember Mamdani in the 2023 state budget made one bus route in each of New York City’s five boroughs free to ride for a year. Lieber said the program caused confusion as the MTA worked to crack down on fare evasion.
Much like the Albany program 48 years ago, the 2023 free bus experiment led to an increase in ridership — though few were new riders, according to the MTA.
Like the New York City pilot, Albany’s Freewheeler buses didn’t last.
“When the funding support dried, so did the service,” said Carm Basile, a former CEO of the Capital District Transportation Authority who started as a transportation planner in 1981.
