Due to steep operational costs, express buses would be an impractical solution to the city’s growing traffic problem, Metropolitan Transit Authority officials say.

At a City Council hearing yesterday organized in response to recent buzz about introducing “congestion pricing” on clogged city streets, the MTA said the large subsidies needed to operate express buses mean they are not a panacea for traffic relief.

The hearing followed this week’s release of two high-profile reports that back road pricing as a traffic-reducing tool the city should consider.

“Expanding express bus service is a low-hanging fruit the MTA should reach for immediately to reduce the number of people driving to Manhattan,” the chairman of the Transportation Committee, John Liu, said yesterday.

MTA officials were less optimistic that expanding the agency’s most heavily subsidized service could help solve the city’s growing traffic problem. Fare revenues on express buses cover just 29% of operating costs, versus 70% of costs covered by fare revenues on subways.

“Each passenger’s subway trip costs us, on average, $1.89, and each local bus passenger trip costs $2.26 on average, while the average cost per passenger for each express bus trip is $11.98,” the MTA’s acting chief of operations planning, Peter Cafiero, said.

Some experts also said express buses would only help alleviate the problem if they could make their way through the city’s streets.

“Until we do something about congestion, it is difficult to establish reliable and efficient bus service,” the president and CEO of the Partnership for New York City, Kathryn Wylde, said.

Ms. Wylde has spent the week making the political rounds with a new study commissioned by the business leadership group that supports congestion pricing.

The Manhattan Institute, a think tank, unveiled a new report yesterday concluding that New Yorkers are open to congestion pricing when it is paired with other measures to improve mass transit.

“There are no other options on the table that would have such an impact on congestion,” the author of the Manhattan Institute report, Bruce Schaller, said of road pricing.

Mr. Schaller presented a plan that would institute selective road pricing, highway express lanes, and a hike in curbside parking fees as a traffic-reducing trifecta. Mr. Schaller’s plan proposes road pricing for vehicles crossing the Hudson River, the East River, or the 60th Street boundary into Lower Manhattan

The fees would be adjusted by time of day, making driving during rush hours more costly than off-peak hours.