Should public transit be a free service? One city just said yes.

In the wee hours of the morning, Albuquerque, New Mexico’s City Council made its free-transit experiment permanent.

It used to cost $1 to ride the city bus. Then during the pandemic, when ridership fell off a cliff, the city used federal relief aid to fund a “zero fare” program — allowing all riders to just hop on the bus without paying a fare or swiping a pass.

Other cities, like Richmond, Virginia; Kansas City, Missouri; and Olympia, Washington, did the same.

Now, with that federal money starting to run out, cities have to decide whether zero fare is worth the cost to their transit systems.