Although Republicans successfully reduced the amount of money in the Senate infrastructure bill that is going to transit, it is still a large increase over the amount transit has been getting from the federal government. Transit agencies received about $14.4 billion from the federal government in 2019. Under the Senate infrastructure bill, this will increase to about $23.3 billion a year, or roughly a 62 percent gain.
Under the bill, transit is guaranteed $14 billion a year from the Highway Trust Fund alone. This is more than 20 percent of total spending out of the trust fund compared with 18 percent in the 2015 FAST Act. Since the trust fund isn’t collecting enough money out of fuel taxes and other federal highway user fees to even pay for the highway share, transit’s share of the fund will all be deficit spending.
Transit will also get $1.6 billion a year for “fixed guideway capital investments,” which doesn’t come from the Highway Trust Fund. Also known as New Starts, the vast majority of this money will be wasted on obsolete rail transit projects such as light rail and streetcars. The rest will be wasted on dedicated bus lanes for bus-rapid transit.
Most of the money for bus-rapid transit and streetcars has come from a special part of the New Starts program called Small Starts. Under this program the federal government has paid up to $75 million for projects costing no more than $300 million. Unlike other New Starts projects, transit agencies don’t have to put of matching funds so sometimes the federal government ends up paying for all or nearly all of a Small Starts project such as a bus-rapid transit line.
Under the infrastructure bill, the amount the federal government will pay for a Small Starts projects is increased to $150 million and the total cost of the project is increased to $400 million. The latter doesn’t really matter because transit agencies quickly figured out they could build projects in stages and get the feds to pay incrementally for those stages, but the increase to $150 million means even more will be wasted on these projects.
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Transit has also typically received about $1.0 billion a year in various “flexible funds.” The Congestion Mitigation & Air Quality (CMAQ) fund, for example, can be spent on any projects that the Secretary of Transportation thinks will reduce congestion, including traffic signal coordination or improved bus service. Add this $1 billion to the other money and the total is $16.6 billion.
Of course, there is a very real probability that states and metropolitan planning organizations will increase the amount of flexible money going to transit proportional to the increase in total spending. Transit flexible funds were 2.2 percent of the total Highway Trust Fund in 2019; that would be $1.5 billion a year in the infrastructure bill. With the $14 billion already allocated to transit plus the $1.6 billion in New Starts (which doesn’t come from the Highway Trust Fund), its total will be about $17.1 billion a year.
On top of these annual funds, the bill gives transit $21.25 billion outright. This is not an annual grant, and is not likely to be repeated in future years, so if divided over five years it represents $4.25 billion a year. This brings transit’s total to $21.35 billion.
On one hand, transit carries nine times as many passenger miles as Amtrak, yet gets less than twice as much funding out of this bill. On the other hand, highways carry nearly 100 time as many passenger miles as transit (and infinitely more freight), yet get only three times as much money. Transit advocates may be upset that transit isn’t getting as much out of this bill as Biden originally proposed. But considering transit’s low ridership since the pandemic, it is still making out like bandits.
