One candidate wants to beat up well-to-do fare beaters. Another thinks the current Department of Transportation commissioner is a political hack. And a third wants buses to simply be free.
Yes, the 2025 mayoral race is in full swing — which also means the candidate forum season is here, too.
Seven declared candidates are looking to knock off Mayor Adams in a primary in June, and plenty of others waiting in the wings. So Riders Alliance kicked off the campaign with a candidate forum on Monday night featuring five Democratic candidates for mayor (Comptroller Brad Lander, Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani, state Sens. Zellnor Myrie and Jessica Ramos, and former Comptroller Scott Stringer) along with attorney Jim Walden, who's currently running as an independent.
Unsurprisingly, no one thought Adams is doing a great job when it comes to building bus lanes or supporting congestion pricing. Surprisingly, Stringer mentioned that when he saw a rich person hop a turnstile, he wanted to beat the guy to a pulp. Also in a bit of a surprise, Lander threw a stiff right cross in the vicinity of DOT Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez, telling the audience that his DOT commissioner would "be a professional, world-class DOT commissioner, not a patronage appointment." Ouch!
Lander does have some cleaning up to do closer to home though, as it turns out his NYPD drivers have been hit with seven speed camera, five bus camera and two red light camera tickets since 2022.
"I'm disturbed to see them, and I'll be following up to ensure the drivers comply with the laws and don't speed," he told Streetsblog after the forum. "Part of the whole idea of the driver accountability program is to have all agencies more accountable for their driving infractions."
The forum itself was not so much a back-and-forth debate as an opportunity for candidates to lay out their vision for the city's streetscape, which they did by answering questions asked directly by Riders Alliance members. With everyone who sat centerstage promising better transit, it's worth digging into what each would-be mayor's biggest vision of the night was.
Comptroller Brad Lander: An end to subway homelessness
When a Riders Alliance member asked the candidates what they would do about subway safety, Lander skipped right over focusing on better services on the subway system itself and said he would make sure people living on the subway had more stable homes.
"I'm making a commitment to all of you: when I'm mayor we will end street homelessness and subway homelessness of severely mentally ill people in New York City. That is actually an achievable goal, and you don't do it by [filling] vacant spaces in the subway with services. You do it by connecting people to stable housing, which is what enables them to get out of the subway or off the streets. We will be laying out a plan that shows how we can take the several thousand people who are mentally ill and on the streets and subways of our city, and through a continuum of care and services, some enforcement but primarily with the path to housing, to end street homelessness of severely mentally ill people."
Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani: Make our buses the envy of the world
Mamdani never wavered from his stated commitment to free buses, but for the man who's been talking about free buses for two years, that's not a shock. But after Ramos and Stringer spent time praising the bus service in Bogota, Colombia, Mamdani said he'd focus on making city buses the gold standard.
"I believe that one thing that sets me apart in this is a significant part of my entire campaign is built around the promise of a transformed bus network. It is built around the promise of a world-class city having world-class transit. If we want to abandon, in the words of Scott [Stringer] the minimalism that has taken hold of so much of city government, then the example of Bogota is a compelling one, especially when you think about the fact that Bogota moves 40,000 people in an hour on bus rapid transit. The number one bus route in New York City moves 30,000 people in 24 hours. We have an opportunity to change this. We have an opportunity so that in 10 years in Bogota, they're gonna be talking about what we're doing here, and it's time that we actually live up to that."
State Sen. Zellnor Myrie: A Flatbush Avenue bus lane
Myrie wasn't the only candidate who talked about specific projects during the forum. But when one Riders Alliance member asked each person running what they would do to transform major streets like Flatbush Avenue, Myrie showed more commitment to the project than Mayor Adams has, and specifically framed it as something that would help working class New Yorkers.
"You need a mayor that has political courage. We've got to stand up for how most people get around this city. We got to stand up for how working class people like my mom get around the city. So not only do I support [bus lanes] on Flatbush Avenue in my district, but I support it across the city because we deserve it.
State Sen. Jessica Ramos: Automatic Registration for Fair Fares
Everyone running for mayor supported raising the Fair Fares eligibility threshold to 200 percent of the federal poverty level, up at or below 120 percent of the federal poverty level. Even an expanded system won't work well if fewer than half the people who are eligible actually enroll in it, so Ramos said the city should bring them in automatically.
"There should be presumptive eligibility [for Fair Fares]. If a New Yorker is already qualifying for SNAP, for city FHEPS, for any other program, they should be able to sign up for Fair Fares very, very easily."
Ex-Comptroller Scott Stringer: Finally flipping the gas tax
Stringer went back to an oldie but a goodie at the forum, and promised that as mayor, he would make sure Albany finally agreed to change the allocation of the gas tax in the downstate region to favor mass transit over highway spending.
"We're going to realize my plan of making sure that buses and trains run six minutes apart. We've got to get to Albany and flip the gas tax. Right now, it's $1.8 billion generated every year, but 64 percent goes to state highways. 34 percent goes to New York City streets and subway infrastructure. We need that money, and what we're going to do with that money is expand our bus routes."
Attorney Jim Walden: Taking the focus off fare enforcement
Walden doesn't have much of a transportation record to rest on besides helping to try to undo the Prospect Park West bike lane. And while he relished an opportunity to talk about enforcement and subway safety, Walden also said he wouldn't make fare evasion enforcement a top priority if he were in City Hall.
"We should fix the capital problems that the MTA is having. We should create better service. We should have more reliable service, and we should work on all of those problems while we study fare evasion a little bit more and work with the DAs and the police department and come up with a strategy that makes sense, because I don't believe that every single person that jumps a turnstile is a bad actor. And I also don't believe that the juice is worth the squeeze. If we go after all of those people, how much money are we spending on enforcement that we could have for other programs? So I would say let's pause on the question of punishing the turnstile jumpers for now, fix the larger problems and then deal with fare evasion, once we see whether or not these other fixes have reduced the numbers."
Correction: An earlier version of this story suggested that one candidate wants all transit to be free, but he has limited the free rides to buses.
