Several New York City mayoral candidates on Monday criticized Mayor Eric Adams for the city's stagnant bus system during a transportation forum organized by the nonprofit Riders Alliance.
The event, hosted by BRIC Arts Media in Downtown Brooklyn, featured six candidates vying for the Democratic nomination in the June 2025 primary. Each candidate outlined their vision for improving the city’s transportation network with a primary focus on the bus system. Participants included NYC Comptroller Brad Lander, NY State Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, NY State Senators Zellnor Myrie and Jessica Ramos, former NYC Comptroller Scott Stringer and attorney Jim Walden.
The forum highlighted the growing dissatisfaction with the current administration’s handling of transit issues and set the stage for a heated race centered on the city's infrastructure and commuter experience.
A recurring theme among the candidates was the urgent need to overhaul outer borough bus services, including the B41 service on Flatbush Avenue, which riders frequently criticize as sluggish and unreliable. Many of the contenders emphasized that improving bus efficiency would be a priority in their transportation agendas.
Ramos said she would consider getting rid of parking spaces on major bus routes to speed up service. She also questioned whether the mayor had even built 12 of the 150 miles of new and enhanced bus lanes that he promised in 2022: “We have a lot of catching up to do,” she said, referring to the building and completion of the lanes.
Mamdani reiterated the need for all bus services to be free, one of his major talking points since the launch of his campaign: “One in five New Yorkers can’t afford the fare, so this is a systemic issue,” he said. “The bus system must be free.”
Lander said that outer borough bus service improvements also need to keep up with major fixes seen in Manhattan. “If we do something in Manhattan, then we need something to happen on Fordham Road in the Bronx,” he said.
Lander also took a dig at the mayor's tendency to appoint friends to top positions in City Hall. Without explicitly naming current Department of Transportation Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez, who was a City Council member before taking over the agency, Lander said a DOT Commissioner should “not be a political patronage appointee.”
Stringer said he would raise funds for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority by raising various taxes, including the gas tax: “Wall Street must pay,” he said, without adding specifics.
Stringer also promised a revamp of the DOT. He said the current mayoral administration was “a roving crime scene,” referring to what he called pay-to-play practices at City Hall: “I’m telling you know, when I’m mayor, zero tolerance for this kind of behavior."
All of the candidates agreed on the need to expand the Fair Fares program, which allows certain New Yorkers to ride the subway and buses at a 50% discount. Ramos said if a city resident is approved for any city service for low-income New Yorkers, then they should automatically get enrolled in Fair Fares.
Government outreach about available services is terrible, Ramos said, since about 40% of eligible residents had so far signed up for the program: “City Hall has spoken only English for too long,” she said.
Jim Walden, a lawyer who is running as an Independent, said he would expand Fair Fares based on living wages, not on federal income standards.
Lander said he would expand the program to include City University of New York (CUNY) students and would like the discount to be applied to regional transit lines, including the Long Island Rail Road, Metro North and PATH trains.
In order to make subway riders feel safe, the candidates agreed that additional nurses and social service workers were needed to help homeless New Yorkers.
Walden said he would like to see unused retail spaces in subway stations converted into health and medical support-service rooms where homeless individuals can get help.
Myrie, who officially launched his mayoral campaign on Tuesday, said many New Yorkers feel safe when they see cops on the subway: “The New York Police Department should be part of the subway ecosystem,” said Myrie.
But that doesn’t mean the city should spend more money on robocops or deploying additional police officers that end up bunched up by the turnstiles on their phones, he added.
Walden noted that if the subway system needs to be shut down on a regular basis to fix its signal system, then the city needed to add more regular and express buses: “We otherwise don’t have an attractive alternative when we need to fix the subways,” he said.
When asked if they had been on a city bus in the past month, all of the mayoral candidates but Walden answered "yes."
