On Tuesday, Michelle Wu made history in Boston when she was sworn in as the City on the Hill’s first woman, first person of color, and first Asian American popularly elected mayor. After she was sworn in, Mayor Wu told reporters, “We have so much work to do.” The Boston Globe pointed out that Wu is the “youngest mayor leading one of the nation’s 25 largest cities.”

On Wednesday, Wu announced plans to “make Boston’s 23, 28 & 29 bus lines fare-free for a 2-year period” as part of an $8 million pilot program. The plan is to use some of the infrastructure funds and money allotted toward COVID-19 recovery to help make this happen. The general plan for more progressive city officials across the country is to make public transit more affordable, if not free, for everyone living in a major city. The three proposed bus lines are used predominantly by low-income people of color, according to the Globe.

While this pilot proposal must still be voted on by the city council, everyone believes it will pass. This is in part because of the success of a similar, smaller pilot program that was extended by interim acting Mayor Kim Janey last week.

Mayor Wu says she is building off of the success of the fare-free pilot program and provided even more robust data she believes will build momentum toward a public transit system that everyone can afford. Worcester Mayor Joe Petty told the Globe, “I’m very pleased with this. I think people need to invest in public transportation whether it be the state or the federal government. As you see gas prices rise and the effects of climate change, this is important.”

Wu has been a champion of keeping transportation costs down for working folks in Boston for years now. Before she ran for Mayor Wu was one of the more vocal leaders of zero-fare public transportation initiatives. After fighting against a fare increase in 2019 as a city councilor, she made news pushing for making Boston’s transportation system free to citizens. In 2020, she told CNBC that “In Boston, public transportation has the potential to be a way to solve all of our deepest challenges: climate change, closing income inequality gaps and addressing racial disparities, intense traffic and congestion problems. But what we see is that without a functioning system that is reliable, affordable, and accessible to all, transportation is actually a barrier to all of those opportunities.” 

The Worcester Regional Transit Authority eliminated fares from all of their bus lines in March 2020, and was able to boast a faster recovery for its ridership numbers during COVID-19 than “any other transit system in Massachusetts.” The move to cheaper and free fare lines is one of the silver linings of the pandemic, as the need and import of public transit to the economic and environmental health of cities has, like everything else during COVID, brought things into stark clarity. As Dennis Lipka, administrator of the Worcester Regional Transit Authority, tells Commonwealth Magazine:

In January 2020, The New York Times estimated that “around 100 cities in the world offer free public transit, the vast majority of them in Europe, especially France and Poland.” And while the United States has lagged behind, the problem remains: Many people cannot afford public transportation, and many people with cars should use public transportation more as it would save municipalities and taxpayers in the long run via lowering carbon emissions, wear and tear on roads, and the medical and emotional costs of vehicular accidents. 

One of the things that most Americans don’t realize is that the funds generated by fares, even in cities like Boston, are usually not that much more in comparison to the costs of collecting and processing that money. But in learning from the positives and negatives of the Affordable Care Act, the progressive movement is using these pilot programs to do two things: prove that the policies that most Americans want actually work, and give Americans a chance to know what they have been missing.

Wu’s program is set to begin in January 2022.