It's Time to Fix the Bus (& why our new campaign for fast, free, and fully-funded buses is about much more than the bus…)
Your bus should have been here by now. And when it finally arrives, chances are it's crawling through traffic, stopping and starting along streets that seem designed to prioritize just about everything except the people on the bus.
More than a million New Yorkers depend on buses every day. Bus riders are the home health aides, teachers, hospital workers, students, parents, and neighbors who keep this city running. But they have been asked to accept a standard of service that would be unthinkable in other parts of our lives: long waits, unpredictable commutes, and buses that barely move faster than walking. Bus riders deserve better and we believe this is the moment to deliver it.
Today, Riders Alliance is launching Fix the Bus, a major new campaign to win buses that are fast, free, and fully funded.
Our demands are straightforward:
Fast buses that get riders where they need to go, with streets designed to prioritize moving people, not just cars. Faster buses mean more time with our families, more reliable commutes, and better use of the public resources already invested in bus service.
Free buses that make New York more affordable, speed up boarding, and end punitive fare enforcement that harasses riders and delays service. New Yorkers deserve freedom from the financial burden of getting around and from enforcement practices that make the bus a less welcoming place.
Fully-funded buses with the investment needed to deliver frequent, reliable service, meet growing demand, and build a transit system that New Yorkers can actually depend on.
These are ambitious demands. But New York has the resources, the ingenuity, and, most importantly, the critical mass of riders to make them possible. The question is whether we can build the political power to deliver them.
Going from Fighting Back to Moving Forward
Riders Alliance has never been afraid of a big fight.
Our Fix the Subway campaign helped transform Riders Alliance into a citywide political force, challenging Governor Cuomo's management of the transit system and demanding the investment, accountability, and reliable service riders deserved.
Then came the pandemic. As New York ground to a halt and the future of public transit hung in the balance, we fought for federal intervention to keep our buses and subways running. And when emergency funding began to run out, we organized to avert a devastating fiscal cliff, helping win a state budget that not only protected transit from cuts but included an historic increase in subway service frequency..
We kept pushing. After years of organizing, congestion pricing finally became a reality, delivering a new source of transit funding and proving that New York could take bold steps to rethink how our streets work.
And this year, we won the largest expansion of Fair Fares since the program began, opening the door to more affordable transit for over a million New Yorkers.
None of these victories were inevitable. They required years of organizing, confronting powerful interests, and refusing to accept that the status quo was the best New York could do. But there's something else these fights have in common: for much of our history, we've been responding to crises, fighting back against bad decisions, or struggling to deliver commitments that should never have been in question. Now, we're in a position to do something different.
Instead of simply responding to the political agenda, we have an opportunity to help set it. It’s no longer enough to only protect the transit system we have, we need to organize to build the one New Yorkers deserve. And we're starting with the bus.
Changing the Politics of Our Streets
We know how these fights tend to go. The city proposes a new bus lane or a street redesign that could save thousands of riders time every day. Almost immediately, the conversation turns to parking, traffic, and what drivers might lose. Projects get delayed, scaled back, or abandoned altogether. Elected officials get burned, and the next time around, they're even less willing to take a risk.
Meanwhile, the people who would benefit most from these changes are often barely part of the conversation. This isn't because bus riders don't care. It's because we haven't built the kind of organized political constituency that can consistently show up, make demands, and hold elected officials accountable. Bus riders are essential to how New York functions, but that hasn't translated into the political influence they should have.
We want to change that.
Our bet is that organizing bus riders can help break through the street wars that have held back progress for years. That means building support for projects before they become political flashpoints, making sure riders have a real voice in how streets are redesigned, and demonstrating that there is a large and organized constituency for faster, more reliable buses.
And importantly, we don't want to build that power just to win a bus lane and move on. We want riders who organize around their daily commutes to have a meaningful say in the much bigger decisions that shape our transit system and our city.
Building Power for What's Next
At Riders Alliance, we've always worked at the intersection of people, politics, and policy. Our people are riders. Our policy is great public transit. But politics is what determines whether we actually get there.
New York has made enormous investments in transit, and we've fought hard for many of them. But we're still nowhere near having the system this city needs, where everyone has options, that saves all of us time and money. We need buses and subways that come frequently and reliably, a system that people can afford, stations and services that are accessible to everyone, and much better connections across the city and region. And we're going to need billions more in public investment to make that happen.
The challenge isn't just figuring out what good transit policy looks like. We have plenty of ideas and many of the solutions are well understood. The harder question is how we build the political support to deliver them, especially when doing so requires difficult decisions about street space, public spending, and who should pay.
That's a big part of why we're launching Fix the Bus.
Over the next several years, we're going to organize riders around improvements they can see and feel in their daily lives, while connecting those fights to a broader agenda for transit affordability, investment, and accountability. We'll start with buses, but we intend to bring subway and commuter rail riders into this campaign, too, building a deep and broad constituency that reaches across neighborhoods, boroughs, and eventually the region.
And we want to do this in a way that gives more New Yorkers a real role in shaping what happens next. For someone who's spent years waiting for a bus that never comes, organizing with their neighbors and winning a faster commute can be a powerful introduction to what collective action can accomplish. That experience shouldn't end with a single victory. Each win should position us to take on another campaign and achieve a bigger victory for riders and the city.
Ultimately, we want Riders Alliance to be more than an organization that wins good transit policies. We want to help build a political constituency of riders that elected officials have to take seriously, not just when there's a transit crisis or a controversial bus lane, but whenever decisions are being made about New York's future.
So, let's Fix the Bus!
None of this will happen overnight. And none of it will happen without riders. We're launching Fix the Bus because we believe New Yorkers deserve a transit system that respects their time, makes their lives more affordable, and gives them the freedom to move around their city. We're also launching it because we believe riders have the power to make that vision real.
Whether you ride the bus every day, rely on the subway, or simply believe New York should have the best public transit system in the world, we hope you'll be part of what comes next.
Join our All-Member Meeting on Monday, November 2 at 7pm to learn more about the Fix the Bus campaign, our plans for the months ahead, and how you can get involved.
Together, bus riders have the power to win fast, free, and fully funded buses. Alone, we're just stuck in traffic. Let's Fix the Bus!
