Zohran Mamdani’s proposal for free buses has brought new attention to one of New York City’s often overlooked pieces of infrastructure. His plan would make buses fare-free, faster, and more reliable, with priority lanes and bus queue jump signals. If implemented, it would put buses and bus stops at the center of how New Yorkers move through the city. Around the world, cities like Bogotá, Paris, and Seoul have already elevated the bus as the most democratic and public-friendly form of urban mobility. For New York, this shift presents an important question: If buses are about to take center stage, what needs to change about how we design bus stops?

*The Bx18 bus stop in the Bronx. Photo by *Joel Rose, NPR posted on KCUR

Bus stops and subway entrances are the nexus point of transportation and public life, places where people wait, meet, and begin or end their journeys. And yet, despite their presence on almost every block, they’re rarely thought of as part of the city’s public realm. They are designed to serve a purpose—to move the public efficiently—but not to invite people to stay or connect.

This is how the Social Life Project, an advocacy organization for better public space, describes the issue: “Placing a public bench/seating around the station entrance establishes a basic, unequivocal statement that the station belongs to the surrounding community—it transcends its role as a through-way and becomes something to enjoy. This stands in direct contrast to the norm, in which station entrances are too often designed as places void of anything that might invite someone to stick around. Unfortunately, this is often the result of transportation agencies’ priorities of improving pedestrian flow and getting rid of any ‘obstacle’ that gets in the way. In that view, a well-loved bench might even be seen as an impediment and need to be removed.”

A simple bench next to a subway entrance invites commuters, residents, and passersby to sit and rest. Photo by Marium Naveed.

The city’s Chief Public Realm Officer (CPRO) can play a key role in changing this. The office was created to coordinate across departments, agencies, and communities to make New York’s streets more people-centered. It has already made progress in expanding plazas, outdoor dining, and pedestrian corridors. But the focus of the public realm needs to be expanded to bus stops and subway entrances, as they are among the city’s most widely used public spaces.

Marium Naveed’s graduate thesis, How Public Life Around Transit Stations Can Anchor the Station as an Essential Public Space for the Neighborhood, conducted at Pratt Institute, focused exactly on this aspect. Her research found that some stations naturally supported public life, while others did not. The difference was in the surrounding built environment: public life thrived where there was room for people to linger, where there was traffic calming in place, and where there was clustering of small everyday activities nearby. When these three elements came together, station areas felt like part of a neighborhood.

A framework for designing transit stations that support public life, developed by Marium Naveed.

New York City has 472 subway stations, most with exits and entrances at street intersections. With about 3.4 million riders on an average weekday, these intersections are some of the busiest places in the city. Yet we rarely design them as places. What if every station entrance displayed the time of the next train at street level? What if there were places to sit, food carts, newsstands, shade trees, and good lighting? What if intersections were narrowed to make crossings safer and corners were “daylit” for pedestrians? What if bike racks were placed near entrances to encourage multimodal travel? What if there were clear signs to help people find their way or public restrooms nearby?

Think about how often we already use these spaces. We stop outside a subway entrance to chat with friends before parting ways; we meet them waiting at the top of the stairs. We grab a coffee on the way to the train or pick up groceries on the way home. Children gather at subway entrances in the mornings, waiting for friends before heading to school en masse.

Subways are a defining part of New York’s identity. People often describe where they live by naming the nearest station. Each one carries a sense of place, shaped by its small design details, mosaics, or artworks. Bus stops, by contrast, are marked with the same blue post across the city. As buses move into the spotlight, it’s worth asking: Why not let our bus network offer that same local meaning and identity?

Mamdani’s proposal makes this contrast more urgent—it will grow ridership, and stops will thus experience higher use. With 15,000-plus bus stops across the five boroughs, they are among the most evenly distributed public assets in the city, typically placed every two to three city blocks. They serve 5,000 buses operating on more than 300 routes. Each one, if treated as part of the public realm, could contribute to a more equitable and connected city.

One challenge with taking this holistic approach to the design of transit stations is the balkanization of jurisdiction over our streets. You can certainly imagine the difficulty of navigating these different jurisdictions. It can be challenging just to plant a tree in the forest of oversight and regulation that governs our streets.

The CPRO is well positioned to take the lead in this regard. The office looks across agencies and identifies how city streets, sidewalks, and curbs can serve people better. Bus stops fall precisely at that intersection; they are managed by the MTA but sit on city streets overseen by the DOT. The lack of coordination between these entities has long prevented meaningful change in how stops are designed or maintained. The CPRO can bridge this divide by expanding the city’s understanding of what the public realm includes.

To do this, the city must begin by recognizing that bus stops are not only functional sites but civic ones. Small adjustments like allowing small vendors or community information boards can make them useful beyond the moment of waiting. Most important, planning for bus stops with the same care given to plazas or promenades can signal that these everyday spaces matter.

The Project for Public Spaces’ Portals to Places initiative explores the creation of transit facilities and a public realm that supports riders, with a special emphasis on buses. In the linked blog post, PPS Senior Director of Programs & Projects Nidhi Gulati emphasizes the need for a variety of land uses around bus stops and a variety of community needs to be met at and around the bus stop. When surrounded by multiple everyday destinations, transit stations can become the focal point and “hang out” spot for a neighborhood.

A vision for New York City’s transit stations: 13 actions that can transform stations into vibrant public spaces for their neighborhoods. Illustration by Marium Naveed.

Thinking of bus stops as public spaces is also a way to advance equity. Improving stops citywide would mean improving public life citywide. This is where the idea of the public realm becomes most powerful: not as a collection of landmark projects, but as a network of everyday places. Bus stops and subway entrances are among the few spaces where, however briefly, strangers share the same small patch of city. At a time when social connection in urban settings feels increasingly thin, these spaces matter.

The CPRO’s leadership offers a chance to tie the city’s mobility systems and its social systems together. Mamdani’s vision of fast and free buses redefines transit as a public good into something shared and accessible. Extending that spirit to the design and governance of bus stops would complete the picture.

New York has often led the way in reimagining public life, from pocket parks to open streets. It can do so again by expanding the idea of the public realm to include its most ordinary spaces. When the city begins to see bus stops and subway entrances not as just transit infrastructure, but as parts of neighborhood life and social infrastructure, it can transform the daily experience of millions of people.

Featured image by Marium Naveed.