‘Free’ NYC buses mean more MTA fare hikes (and taxes) — not ‘equity’

The MTA is bending the knee on a fave policy hobbyhorse of deranged progressives: free public transit. 

The agency is making five NYC bus routes free for six months starting in September, at a cool $15 million cost to taxpayers. 

The initiative, coming from Albany lefties, is meant to (in the words of Gov. Kathy Hochul) improve “transit equity.”

Fill in the “equity” square on your Twitter Dem bingo card, everybody!

This pilot program is clearly meant only to be a first step.

At the same time, note that the MTA transit board last week OK’d fares at summer’s end, to almost three bucks. 

What a fine example of the no-such-thing-as-a-free-lunch theory.

Look, this has nothing to do with equity. 

There’s already a program in place to provide low-income New Yorkers with a 50% discount on MTA farecards. 

And poor and working-class people in the city don’t need small-ball “equity” pushes. They need safe streets, good schools and good jobs — all hampered by lefty policies on crime, public education and the economy. 

No, this is about the apparently unconquerable left-wing conviction that every public good should be “free” (i.e. totally tax-funded, with no user fees at all). 

Lefties insist millionaires and billionaires can pay for all this.

But the Empire State’s horrible tax climate is already driving out our high-income earners. 

And more handouts (like free buses) eventually also mean higher taxes on top of fare rises — which means more bleeding. 

The plan is also clearly a way to deal with the MTA’s massive farebeating problem (which is especially bad on buses, costing $315 million in 2022) by getting rid of fares instead of crooks. 

Can’t progressives get anything right?