US Transportation Department Releases $1.7B To Update Transit Fleet

newer and electric buses are coming to many US states.

The US Department of Transportation's Federal Transit Administration recently announced it is releasing $1.66 billion in grants to transit various states, territories, and transit agencies across the country, updating their transport fleet and making them more eco-friendly in the process.

The funding is authorized under President Biden's Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, as enacted in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, per the Transportation Department.

Updating The Fleet

The Transportation Department and the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) are sending out $1.66 billion in grants to transit agencies, territories, and states across the country to invest in 150 bus fleets and facilities in each of them, with the funding coming from President Joe Biden's Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, per the Transportation Department's announcement.

US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg mentioned that the awards given will help communities across the country, including Indian reservations, to purchase more than 1,800 new buses, with most of them being zero-emission buses, reducing air pollution and helping meet President Biden's goal of net-zero emissions by 2050. Each awardee will receive funding to purchase new buses, update their garage facilities to install charging infrastructure and retrain drivers and mechanics to support their maintenance and upkeep.

The new grants and awards will bring the total number of zero-emission buses funded by the infrastructure law up to 1,800 - more than double the number of clean, electric buses on the roads as of press time.

However, this number only represents a fraction of the public buses currently in operation in the US, which number around 60,000.

Interestingly, about half of the buses purchased through the grant will not be zero-emission; they will be powered by natural gas or alternatives that make the air less toxic, according to FTA deputy administrator Veronica Vanterpool, per The Verge.

"We know for some agencies zero emission isn't the answer yet," Vanterpool added. "But they want to replace their older diesel or gasoline buses with something better for their community."

Regardless, the grants awarded are expected to give more Americans access to opportunities for "good-paying American manufacturing jobs," which also helps America's transit workers prepare for new vehicle technology.

Buttigieg added that the grants award would improve and increase bus service and bus reliability, allowing more people to get to where they need to on time and at an affordable price. It will also lower costs for local taxpayers.

A Wise Move?

Whether the updating is a wise move is still up for debate. Many transit agencies still struggle to recover ridership in the years since the COVID-19 pandemic. Many challenges, like changing commuter habits, staffing shortages, and declining revenue, continue to affect most, if not all, transit systems in the US.

Meanwhile, Experts believe that transit agencies could undergo a "death spiral" of sorts due to these challenges - terrible service often leads to even fewer riders, which leads to more terrible service.

Tim McCormick, a transit planning consultant and former manager of transit planning and performance at Big Blue Bus in Santa Monica, California, said that many bus riders return to a much different situation than when they left, which presents major social problems occurring on the bus that has nothing to do with routes and schedules, per GovTech.

"When you're trying to attract people back to a system, in the US, that's something that a lot of people are just not willing to tolerate," McCormick added.

On the other hand, many critics believe that now isn't the time to update bus fleets but to improve their service to attract more people to ride buses than book rides with Uber and other ride-hailing apps.