free

Using a throwaway here

I live in Olympia. Back in 2019 (I think) the local bus line, Intercity Transit, needed to refit the entire bus fleet with new fare collection devices, which would have cost several million dollars. Olympia already is a city that is mostly government employees and college students who weren't paying for fares anyway, and the company only received 9% of its income through fare collection. Ultimately, they made the decision that it just wasn't worth it so they said that they will be removing all fees for riding the bus for the next 5 years and see how that turns out

Compared to that one article about how the NYPD spent $250,000,000 to stop $200,000,000 of turnstile hoppers, it's nice to live in the slightly less capitalist nightmare city