A Queens assemblyman is speaking out after state budget negotiations cut funding for the city’s free fare bus program.

The initiative, which costs the MTA roughly $15 million, launched last September offering fare-free rides on one MTA bus in each borough.

State lawmakers passed the $237 billion budget agreement over the weekend, but the program did not make the cut.

Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani (D-Astoria) one of the biggest champions of the free bus service, joined “Mornings On 1” Tuesday, saying he believed the MTA was never in support of the program in the first place.

“I think the core issue was that despite the coalition that we had created behind this program … the MTA was opposed to this program. And they were opposed to this program because they were saying that now is not the time to create any kind of confusion around fare collection,” he said.

The MTA said no end date has been set for the free fare program and will report results of the pilot at a future date.

Mamdani also pushed back on critics of the program who believed the free bus rides benefited affluent individuals by noting that the MTA selected bus routes specifically in working-class and low-income communities.

“The MTA picked these routes, so the idea of characterizing them as ‘giving rich guys freebies’ is a complete fabrication of who's actually getting on these buses,” he said.

The agency was approved $12 million toward buses from the state, but Mamdani said that funding will be going to improving existing service.

“It'll go towards making buses more frequent and more reliable,” he said. “Because too many of my constituents, when they're at the bus stop— one, they don't know when the next bus is coming because they can't trust their phone. And the second is, too often they're waiting more than 10, 20 minutes for that bus to arrive.”