City That Inspired Mamdani's Free Bus Fantasy Runs Out of Other People's Money

If they weren't so dangerous, watching all of the goofy ideas that self-proclaimed Democratic Socialists hatch would be downright comical. Normal people know full well that whatever they come up with is not going to work and, in the process, will be hugely expensive for taxpayers. One of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani's signature campaign promises was free buses. One city was actually the inspiration for Mamdani's freebie buses. How is that working out there?

Kansas City was the first major US city to make buses free. Six years later, as the policy has gained political steam elsewhere, it brought fares back. https://t.co/VfxKl21RsP
— Bloomberg (@business) June 22, 2026

In 2020, the powers that be in Kansas City, Missouri, decided they would bring a little socialism to the Midwest in the form of no bus fare. Six years later, the answer to how is that working out is: not so much. Beginning June 1, Kansas City buses returned to charging fares. What happened? The obvious, what was a whopping $50 million experiment, went belly up as soon as the money dried up. Operating costs for the program ballooned to roughly $15 million per year, almost double the initial cost, and riders and conductors all described the buses as "unreliable, filthy, rolling homeless shelters."

Rich Azzopardi was a spokesman for former Gov. Andrew Cuomo's campaign for New York City mayor. He said what everyone else is thinking.

“This is my shocked face. The math was never going to work and for the good of New Yorkers, let’s hope this becomes yet another instance where Mamdani breaks his word — and while we’re at it he should ditch the nonsensical Soviet-style grocery stores too.”

In December of 2025, right after he was elected the Big Apple's first Muslim Democratic Socialist Mayor, Mamdani was asked how he planned on funding the giant freebie. He stated the answer to getting the almost $700 million needed would be by “raising the corporate tax.” When confronted with the fact that, at the time, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul stated she would not raise taxes, Mamdani came back with this gem: “The most important fact is that we fund it, not the question of how we do it, but that we do it.”

Kansas City Missouri - The city that inspired Mamdani's 'free NYC bus plan' is bringing back fares - after it ran out if money. Go figure. pic.twitter.com/VT9Lttu8qm
— Sean Christopher (@Sean37025291061) June 22, 2026

In Kansas City, they were doing math, too. The original estimate of revenue loss from the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority (KCATA) was around $8.8 million a year when it became the first city to attempt to eliminate bus fare. But due to unforeseen costs and inflation, that price tag jumped to $15 million. Chief Mobility and Strategy Officer for the KCATA, Tyler Means, also said what everyone else was thinking: “As we ran out of the money and the support, we were forced to make more service cuts or move to fares to support those services."

ALSO READ: Mamdani’s ‘Balanced Budget’ Is an Accounting Atrocity

Will unreliable, filthy, rolling homeless shelters still appear at some point in New York City? Zohran Mamdani is a true socialist believer, and like his fellow socialist travelers, it is impossible to talk them out of their socialist utopia hallucinations, so it might happen yet. But this is more living proof of just how right Margaret Thatcher was, that the problem with socialism is that you really do run out of other people's money.

Magical thinking is a very third world trait.

Q: How do you plan to pay for X service?

A: The governor has to raise Y tax

Q: She's not going to.

A: Still gonna do it! pic.twitter.com/MHLyaNnYXs
— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) December 11, 2025

Editor’s Note: New York City is now facing the consequences of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s socialist takeover.

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