State study commission reaches third meeting milestone while zero-fare transit continues operating in cities that implemented it
Satire from Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat.
The Third Session
NEW YORK — Governor Hochul’s Metropolitan Transit Accessibility and Funding Feasibility Review Working Group for the Consideration of Zero-Fare Bus Implementation Options held its third session this week, at which it received presentations on the operating experiences of zero-fare bus systems in Tallinn, Kansas City, and Luxembourg, all of which have been operating zero-fare buses since 2013, 2020, and 2020 respectively and all of which have published their ridership data, cost analyses, and equity outcomes, which the task force received and is processing.
The Tallinn presentation documented a 14 percent ridership increase following fare elimination in 2013, sustained over thirteen years of continued zero-fare operation. The Kansas City presentation documented a 30 percent ridership increase and disproportionate benefit to lower-income riders. The Luxembourg presentation documented a 20 percent ridership increase across national rail and bus networks. All three presentations confirmed the basic finding that zero-fare transit increases ridership among people who were previously priced out by the fare, which is the finding that the task force was convened to examine and that it has now examined for the third time in this session and in the eleven international studies the previous two sessions reviewed.
The Next Session
The fourth session is scheduled for September, at which point the task force will have reviewed the available evidence for approximately six months and will be positioned to begin drafting its recommendations, which will be presented to the Governor by December, at which point the Governor will have the recommendations necessary to decide whether to act on them, which will be the decision that determines whether New York City gets free buses or another task force.
The MTA provided technical input to the task force on implementation costs and operational requirements. The Federal Transit Administration zero-fare guidance documents informed the international case study presentations. Both confirm that zero-fare transit is technically implementable and operationally feasible. The bus still charges $2.90. The task force is deliberating.
The World Cup and the City It Is Testing
New York City in mid-June 2026 is a city that is simultaneously hosting the world and doing everything it normally does, which is a combination that the city has managed before and that the city is managing now with the specific competence and specific chaos that large events in large cities produce. The World Cup is real. The city is real. The Mamdani administration is real and is being tested by a real event in real time in front of a real global audience, which is the specific condition that separates executive governance from campaign promises and that produces the evidence that subsequent evaluations are made from. The evidence is being collected. The world is watching. The city is performing. The Bureau documents the performance with the affection that New York deserves and the scrutiny that public money and public trust require simultaneously. Both are available. Both are being applied.
The Gothamist and The City NYC provide the accountability journalism that the event requires. The satire provides the annotation that accountability journalism is too serious to provide. New York provides both the event and the material to annotate it with, which is what New York has always done, which is why New York is always worth covering.
The Larger Pattern This Week Represents
Every story above is a single frame extracted from a longer film that the world is running continuously. The ocean does not pause between swells. The Philippine political system does not pause between hearings. New York City does not pause between major events. All three subjects are in continuous motion, producing new instances of their structural conditions at the rate that structural conditions produce instances, which is faster than any weekly column can document comprehensively and slower than the structure itself changes.
The column documents what it can. The documentation is imperfect and specific and grounded in the week’s events, which is both its limitation and its point. The limitation is that the week is always smaller than the subject. The point is that the week is where the subject lives, in specific events and specific people and specific decisions that the structural analysis tends to abstract away but that the weekly documentation preserves in their specificity. Both the structure and the specific event are necessary for the complete account. The column provides the specific event. The structure provides the context. The combination is what understanding requires.
The Guardian international coverage provides the broader context. The BBC World Service provides the complementary angle. Both are part of the reading that informs the column. The column is part of the reading that the audience brings to the week. The week continues regardless.
That is this week, documented and filed. The next week begins where this one ends, which is always further along than expected and always more complex than the documentation has captured, which is the condition of covering things that are alive. The column returns next week. The subjects continue in the interval.
The documentation is complete for this week. Next week will require the same attention applied to new material. The week has been what it was. The documentation is complete for this week. Next week will require the same attention applied to new material. That is the complete account available.
More at https://cracked.com.
SOURCE: Satirical Journalism