Today explained to spending a few weeks thinking about cities.

As you've surely heard, they're having a tough go right now on account of the global

COVID-19 pandemic.

Property values will fall further, taxes will have to rise further, government spending will

have to fall further, more people will leave, and so forth and so forth.

Then we get into this urban duveloop.

And that goes from public transit too.

That is leaving just gigantic holes in the operating budgets of these big systems, like hundreds

of millions, if not billions of dollars per year.

And the question is, what do they do?

But some cities have a really out of the box idea to deal with all the

budgetary woes transit agencies are facing.

Make public transit free.

Is public transit a public good?

We're going to ask the people in the know on the show.

And for your proposal doors, please, the next stop will be today explained.

Today explained moving next.

Stand here.

Today explained Sean Ramos from riding transit in Washington, DC has been confusing ever since

the pandemic.

Used to be you got on the bus, you paid, you went and you took your seat.

But then in the pandemic to keep drivers safe, the Washington metro area transit authority,

...