MTA boss Janno Lieber slams Mamdani’s free-bus plan as half-baked — and more expensive than he claims

Metropolitan Transportation Authority CEO Janno Lieber hit the brakes Wednesday on mayoral front-runner Zohran Mamdani’s key campaign promise to provide free buses across the Big Apple — criticizing the plan as half-baked and much more expensive than proposed.

“I want to make sure that people of limited income get priority in this discussion and we’re not just giving a ton of money to people who ride the 104 on the Upper West Side,” Lieber, the MTA chair and CEO, said on NY1.

He also cast doubt on the price tag Mamdani’s campaign has placed on its free bus program — $700 million each year — saying it was an underestimate.

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“They’re looking at fare box revenue that we got from buses last year and so on. But you know, our projection is that that bus revenue is going to start to push closer to a billion dollars a year in the next couple of years,” Lieber said.

Lieber said the policy idea pushed by the democratic socialist lawmaker also needed to have numerous stages of analysis and review, suggesting any implementation could be years away.

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“Any change of the scale that’s being talked about, taking a section of our incredibly important transit system and changing it entirely, has to be studied,” he said. “We studied congestion pricing for five years, and when we implemented it, we knew where there might be impacts.”

Lieber also questioned whether the bus system could even handle a surge in new riders that may come with the no-fare plan.

“Are we going to need more buses? Are we going to need more bus drivers? Will we need extra depots?” he asked on NY1. 

“Those need to be studied.”

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Mamdani’s mayoral foe, Andrew Cuomo, claimed the MTA honcho’s comments were political code for he doesn’t support the idea

“That’s Janno Lieber. What he’s saying is, take a lot of years to study. Which is a political way of saying it’s a dumb idea,” said Cuomo, who appointed Lieber when he was governor. 

Mamdani scurried away from The Post when reporters tried to press him on Lieber’s comments later Wednesday.

Lieber raised the issue of the billions of dollars in bonds possibly being at stake if the MTA’s revenue took a hit due to the lack of bus fares.

“I gotta worry about the study of all these different ideas and how they play out fiscally,” he told reporters after an MTA monthly meeting.

“Obviously, bond-holders would want to know that the revenue basis has not been compromised and we’d have to go through a lot of analysis to make sure that we could portray it accurately with bond buyers and people in that market.”

— Additional reporting by Matthew Fischetti