As the executive director of the Living Independent Network Corp, Jeremy Maxand spends his days doing everything within his power to help people who do not drive get around safely and reliably in southern Idaho. Like much of rural America, public transit options across the region are sparse, fragile, and chronically underfunded. The nonprofit organization, which primarily serves individuals with disabilities, receives $100,000 annually from the state through a federal appropriation. This modest stream of money finances transit cards that riders use to pay for their daily transportation needs. However, Maxand does not mince words when describing the region’s current transit framework, characterizing it frankly as a "bare-minimum lifeline service" and a "piecemeal" system that leaves little room for error.
And yet, even that fragile lifeline could soon deteriorate further.
The surface transportation programs authorized by the sweeping $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which was signed into law by President Joe Biden in 2021, are set to expire by the end of the year. In response, federal lawmakers are currently hammering out the intricate details of the bipartisan BUILD America 250 Act, a legislative package intended to reauthorize those critical programs. While transportation advocates have long argued that the Biden-era legislation ultimately failed to sufficiently broaden Americans’ mobility options beyond private automobiles, they view the newly proposed BUILD Act not as a step forward, but as a significant and alarming step backward.
The primary driver of this concern is the sheer scale of the proposed funding reduction. The bill would authorize $16.5 billion less for public transit than its immediate predecessor, allocating $103.3 billion over five years compared with the baseline of $119.9 billion established under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, according to data from the American Public Transportation Association. When adjusted for inflation, the deficit becomes even starker; the Urban Institute estimates that the BUILD Act would require an additional $24 billion just to match the investment levels of the previous law. Consequently, every single state would receive at least $10 million less in formula funding over the five-year lifespan of the proposed legislation.
The ripple effects of these reductions would be felt across the entire transportation sector. Yonah Freemark, a researcher with the Urban Institute, emphasizes that the fallout will extend far beyond major metropolitan centers. There would be a large and damaging decline in overall funding for public transit, and that would be especially true for infrastructure projects that require what is known as capital investment funding—complex projects that demand major, long-term capital investments to build brand-new rail or bus rapid transit lines.
Freemark notes that public transit is too often stereotyped as merely subways rumbling beneath the streets of New York City, obscuring a much more widespread reality. In truth, millions of people rely heavily on public transit in a vast array of smaller communities, including numerous rural communities and tribal lands across the United States. These rural transit systems are fundamentally more reliant on steady federal financial support to provide the basic services they offer than their urban counterparts, making them acutely vulnerable to budgetary shifts in Washington.
Many public transit agencies across the nation have already been struggling financially since passenger ridership plummeted during the COVID-19 pandemic. That sudden drop exacerbated years, and in some cases decades, of systemic underinvestment. Transit advocates and policy experts warn that imposing further federal funding cuts under these delicate circumstances could trigger severe, compounding effects, particularly in rural and underserved regions where alternative options simply do not exist.
The projected cuts could prove particularly painful in states like Idaho, which the Urban Institute estimates would experience the nation’s single largest percentage drop in federal formula transit funding, absorbing an 18 percent reduction. Maxand points out that local governments in Idaho possess severely limited capacity and statutory authority to raise alternative revenue streams for public transportation on their own. When the federal funding goes away, everything goes away, he explains. For vulnerable populations, such a vacuum could leave individuals with disabilities socially isolated, limiting their mobility strictly to essential medical emergencies and appointments.
Maine faces a strikingly similar set of systemic challenges. The Urban Institute estimates that Maine’s federal formula transit funding would fall by roughly 16 percent under the proposed legislation. Josh Caldwell, a co-facilitator of Transportation for Maine who also works for the Natural Resources Council of Maine, notes that the state’s existing transit system is already deeply in need of comprehensive improvement rather than contraction. Nowhere in the state do we currently have service that operates at the standard that we would like to see, which is a dependable regularity of a vehicle arriving every 15 minutes, he observes.
Currently, Maine receives approximately 38 percent of its transit funding directly from the federal government. Compounding the federal uncertainty, the Maine Department of Transportation is already grappling with a massive $400 million transportation funding shortfall. This local deficit has been driven largely by declining state gas tax revenues, a trend accelerated by the state’s decision back in 2011 to freeze the tax relative to inflation.
While significantly less rural than Maine, Indiana would see a comparable decline in federal formula transit funding under the BUILD Act. Austin Gibble, a professional transit planner based in Indianapolis, explains that the looming cuts could force the region’s primary transit agency, IndyGo, to delay vital bus purchases. Such delays would inevitably force the agency to rely longer on older, less reliable vehicles, driving up maintenance costs and increasing the likelihood of service disruptions.
However, Gibble shares Maxand’s broader concern regarding what these funding reductions portend for less populated areas outside the major cities. Rural agencies in Indiana are already horrifically oversubscribed, he notes. In Hamilton County, which stands as the largest county in Indiana without a fixed-route transit service, Gibble points out that the waitlist for rides on the Hamilton County Express—a demand-response service that requires advance reservations—can stretch out for weeks at a time, leaving residents stranded for extended periods.
The adverse impacts of the proposed legislation are by no means limited to rural America or smaller states. The Urban Institute estimates that New York City alone would lose a staggering $2.3 billion in transit funding over a five-year period if the bill passes in its current form. Representative Jerry Nadler, who represents parts of the city in Congress, stood out as the lone Democrat on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee to vote against the bill.
In a public statement detailing his opposition, Nadler argued that the legislation continues a deeply familiar and troubling pattern in national policymaking. Highways are routinely treated as the default national priority, he said, while public rail and transit are left fighting for insufficient resources, despite carrying millions of daily commuters, supporting vibrant regional economies, and actively reducing traffic congestion.
Danny Pearlstein, policy and communications director at the Riders Alliance, echoes the sentiment that federal lawmakers should be aiming higher rather than scaling back when drafting major transportation legislation. The Biden infrastructure bill was not the high water mark, Pearlstein asserted. We could do much better than that in a variety of different ways, and we shouldn’t hold up bipartisanship as a core value of how we fund transportation when we have such sharply diverted views of the fundamental role of government to invest in people and communities.
From an economic perspective, LeeAnn Hall, campaign manager for the Alliance for a Just Society’s National Campaign for Transit Justice, emphasizes that the ongoing debate is fundamentally about household affordability. Transportation consistently ranks as the second-highest expenditure in American household budgets, trailing only housing.
When public transit service is reduced or eliminated entirely, it can push struggling households toward the significant financial burden of acquiring and maintaining an additional personal vehicle. Families are forced to pay significantly more for gasoline, vehicle insurance, parking fees, and regular maintenance and repairs, Hall explained. It is an immediate expansion of the household budget at a time when families are already feeling squeezed.
Hall argues passionately that investing robustly in public transit yields broad societal benefits that extend well beyond those who ride daily. Every single dollar that we invest in public transit directly reduces traffic congestion numbers, makes driving inherently safer for those on the road, and creates essential economic opportunities for families by giving them viable transportation options, she noted.
Back in southern Idaho, Maxand continues his daily efforts to provide local residents with as many mobility options as possible. Yet he recognizes that every service they operate is steadily becoming more expensive to run, particularly as fuel prices continue their volatile rise. He fully expects that federal funding cuts will ultimately hit seniors and individuals with disabilities the hardest, stripping away their independence.
It is conceptually equivalent to saying that you are no longer going to pay for the electricity required to power a life-support ventilator, but you are still going to leave the ventilator in the room, Maxand concluded. What are we actually doing here? This current trajectory is simply not sustainable.