As the executive director of the Living Independent Network Corp, Jeremy Maxand spends his days doing everything in his power to help people who cannot drive get around in southern Idaho. As is the case in the vast majority of rural America, public transit options across the region are remarkably limited, leaving vulnerable populations with few alternatives for daily travel.
The nonprofit organization, which primarily serves individuals with disabilities, receives $100,000 annually from the state through a federal appropriation. This financial support directly finances cards that riders use to pay for their transportation needs. However, Maxand describes the region’s transit network as a “bare-minimum lifeline service” and a “piecemeal” arrangement that barely scratches the surface of what the community actually requires.
And yet, even that precarious framework could soon deteriorate further.
The surface transportation programs authorized by the $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 Washington, lawmakers are currently hammering out the complex details of the bipartisan BUILD America 250 Act, a legislative package designed to reauthorize those vital programs. While transportation advocates have long argued that the Biden-era legislation fell short by failing to broaden Americans’ mobility options significantly beyond private automobiles, they view the proposed BUILD Act not as progress, but as a significant step backward.
That concern stems from the stark reality of the numbers within the bill. According to the American Public Transportation Association, the proposed legislation would authorize $16.5 billion less for public transit than its predecessor. It earmarks $103.3 billion over a five-year period, compared with the baseline of $119.9 billion established under the Jobs Act. When adjusted for the ongoing impacts of inflation, the Urban Institute estimates that the BUILD Act would require an additional $24 billion just to match the previous funding level. Under the current trajectory of the bill, every single state would receive at least $10 million less in formula funding over the five years that the law would remain in effect.
“There would be a large decline in funding for public transit, and that would especially be true for projects that require what’s called capital investment funding — projects that require major investments for new lines,” said Yonah Freemark, a researcher with the Urban Institute.
Freemark emphasizes that the negative consequences of these funding reductions would extend far beyond the nation’s major metropolitan centers. Public transit is frequently misunderstood and unfairly stereotyped in the public consciousness, he notes.
“Public transit is often portrayed as something that is subways in New York City,” Freemark said. “The reality is that millions of people rely on public transit in a lot of smaller communities, including a lot of rural communities and tribal communities around the country. … Those rural transit systems are much more reliant on federal support to provide the service that they offer than are the urban transit agencies.”
Many public transit agencies across the United States have been struggling financially since ridership plummeted during the COVID-19 pandemic. This unprecedented shock exacerbated years of systemic underinvestment in public infrastructure. Now, transit advocates and policy experts warn that further funding cuts could produce severe, cascading effects, particularly in rural regions that lack alternative transportation infrastructure.
The impact of these potential cuts could be acutely painful in states like Idaho, which the Urban Institute estimates would experience the nation’s single largest percentage drop in federal formula transit funding, projected at an 18 percent decline. Maxand noted that local governments in the state possess limited ability to raise revenue independently for public transportation initiatives.
“When the federal funding goes away, everything goes away,” he said.
For the residents Maxand serves, that loss could translate directly into severe social isolation, stripping away their independence and leaving them able to leave their homes exclusively for urgent medical needs.
Maine faces a remarkably similar set of logistical and financial challenges. The Urban Institute estimates that Maine’s federal formula transit funding would fall by 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, pointed out that the state’s existing transit system is already in urgent need of substantial improvement rather than retrenchment.
“Nowhere in the state do we have service that is at the standard that we’d like to see, which is a regularity of every 15 minutes,” Caldwell said, highlighting the infrequent nature of current routes.
Currently, Maine receives about 38 percent of its transit funding from the federal government. Compounding the federal uncertainty, the Maine Department of Transportation already confronts a daunting $400 million transportation funding shortfall. This local deficit has been driven largely by decreased 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 experience a comparable decline in federal formula transit funding under the parameters of the BUILD Act. Austin Gibble, a transit planner based in Indianapolis, explained that these cuts could force the region’s primary transit agency, IndyGo, to delay vital bus purchases. This delay would inevitably force the agency to rely longer on older, less reliable vehicles that require more frequent maintenance.
However, Gibble expressed even greater concern regarding what the proposed federal reductions would mean for the state’s less populated areas.
“Rural agencies in Indiana are already horrifically oversubscribed,” he said.
Pointing to Hamilton County, the largest county in Indiana that currently lacks a fixed-route transit service, Gibble noted that the waitlist for rides on the Hamilton County Express — a service that requires advance reservations — can already stretch for weeks at a time. A reduction in federal support threatens to make an already strained system completely untenable.
The anticipated impacts, however, are not limited to rural America or smaller midwestern counties. The Urban Institute estimates that New York City alone would lose $2.3 billion in transit funding over a five-year period. Reflecting the alarm felt by urban leaders, Representative Jerry Nadler, who represents parts of New York City, stood as the lone Democrat on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee to actively oppose the bill.
“It continues a familiar pattern: Highways are treated as the default national priority, while rail and transit are left fighting for insufficient resources, despite carrying millions of people, supporting regional economies, and reducing congestion,” Nadler said in a public statement.
Danny Pearlstein, the policy and communications director at the Riders Alliance, argued that Democratic lawmakers need to think much bigger when approaching federal transportation legislation, refusing to accept diminished expectations.
“The Biden infrastructure bill was not the high water mark,” Pearlstein said. “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 role of government to invest in people and communities.”
From a broader economic perspective, LeeAnn Hall, the campaign manager of the Alliance for a Just Society’s National Campaign for Transit Justice, emphasized that the ongoing legislative debate is fundamentally about household affordability. For millions of Americans, transportation consistently ranks as the second-highest expense in their monthly household budgets.
Reduced public transit service could easily push struggling households toward the immense financial burden of purchasing and maintaining another personal automobile, Hall warned.
“They have to pay more for gasoline. They’re going to be paying more for insurance. They have to think about parking. They have to think about maintenance and repair,” she said. “It’s expanding their household budget.”
Hall argued that robust public investment in transit ultimately benefits society as a whole, regardless of whether individual citizens use the services daily.
“Every dollar that we invest in public transit reduces congestion numbers, makes driving safer, and creates opportunities for families to have options,” she said.
Back in southern Idaho, Jeremy Maxand remains committed to providing residents with as many mobility options as humanly possible, even as those options grow increasingly expensive to operate amid rising fuel prices. He expects the impending federal cuts to strike seniors and people with disabilities the hardest, threatening their fundamental quality of life.
“It’s like saying you’re not going to pay for electricity to power the ventilator, but you’re going to leave the ventilator,” Maxand said. “What are we doing here? This is not sustainable.”