Thomas Breen File Photo
Aboard the 206.
Zohran Mamdani convinced hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers to vote for a platform promising to make it free to ride the bus in the Big Apple.
He didn’t change Roland Lemar’s mind about whether to try to make it free to ride the bus in Connecticut.
Lemar, who has represented New Haven’s 96th state General Assembly District for 15 years, has taken a lead in the legislature in improving bus service. He has championed improvement in service, as well as plans to create dedicated bus lanes on main routes.
He chose not to prioritize making permanent a temporary Covid-era experiment in making CT Transit bus rides free. He was asked this week whether Mamdani’s surprise victory in New York’s June 24 Democratic mayoral primary on a free-bus platform might lead him to shift strategy.
“The primary doesn’t change my mind,” Lemar said during a conversation Tuesday on WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven” program.
Lemar noted the state decided to suspend $1.75 CT Transit fares during the early years of the pandemic because it was also cutting the gas tax. The idea was to give non-drivers relief as well. Riders as well as drivers applauded the move as helping buses operate more smoothly.
When fares were set to resume in April 2023, Lemar was asked whether he’d support continuing free rides instead. He said at the time that ridership did not rise during the fare-free period (when many jobs were still remote). He reported that in surveys riders had not prioritized free rides as changes they sought. They weren’t complaining about the $1.75 fare. Instead they sought “route predictability, route frequency, and whether or not you could get on the bus safely during a snowstorm. Or [if] a shelter properly is located where there are rats, [or if] the destinations make sense in the 21st century.”
At the time it would have cost $45 million a year to continue free fares, he said. He said it made sense to spend that money on changes people were asking for.
In Tuesday’s interview, he said it would probably cost less than $45 million today to institute a free-fare policy. That’s because in the intervening years he and fellow legislators have succeeded in creating free-fare exceptions for students and veterans.
He was asked about the potential of trying, perhaps, a fare-free policy just for Greater New Haven. If that cost, say, $11 million, he estimated, it would still make more sense to try to direct that money to expanding routes and pursuing the plans for the “MOVE New Haven” transit-improvement plan.
“I can’t get 11 million more dollars for our public school system,” Lemar remarked. “It seems like a small amount of money, but it’s not.” And he’d have to convince legislators from around the state to commit money just for New Haven bus riders.
Click on the video below to watch the full discussion with State Rep. Roland Lemar about the recently completed state legislative session; the discussion about bus fares begins at the 35:14 point. Click here to subscribe or here to listen to other episodes of “Dateline New Haven.”