Transit in the U.S. today

There are nearly 3,000 transit agencies across the U.S., staffed by over 380,000 workers and serving everything from the largest metro regions to rural towns, moving millions of Americans billions of miles. Americans took nearly 10 billion transit trips in 2019, but COVID-19 significantly disrupted urban travel patterns in ways that are still being understood and accounted for. Both transit and car trips are more distributed across regions, times of day, and days of the week. While transit ridership has slumped in the wake of the pandemic and amidst the proliferation of remote work options, it is important to note that transit service itself has not recovered to pre-COVID levels, nor have most service routes adapted to new travel patterns. (As an example of what more transit agencies should do, WMATA in Washington, DC, recalibrated service to provide greater frequency at all times of day, pivoting away from a focus on 9-5 peak travel.) Between decades of systemic underinvestment and more recent, unaddressed changes to travel patterns, it should be no surprise that many communities lack quality transit service and reasonably affordable housing that would make transit a viable daily option.

Starting in the mid-20th century, decisions to disproportionately subsidize cars and car-oriented infrastructure led to the decommissioning of the nation’s once-extensive networks of streetcars, regional trains, and city buses. These systems were often dismantled or left to decay, replaced with freeways and suburban development heavily subsidized by the federal government and the gas tax. Deliberate policy decisions helped devalue and disinvest in transit over time.

Today’s system is the result of decades of underfunding, not a lack of need. Other countries, including those with smaller economies, operate high-quality transit in cities of all sizes. In many of those places, it’s normal for smaller cities to have frequent, electrified buses, regional rail, and seamless connections between modes. U.S. cities lag behind global peers in service frequency, network coverage, and integration with land use.

U.S. transit ridership by mode

Between October 2019 and September 2023, U.S. transit ridership declined 28 percent, and rail ridership was down 34 percent.

U.S. transit vehicle revenue miles by mode

Between October 2019 and September 2023, transit service, as measured by vehicle revenue miles, was down 16 percent for buses, while rail service was down 8 percent relative to 2019 levels in 2023. However, in areas where service has more strongly rebounded, such as in Washington, DC, ridership improvements have followed service improvements. Still, service cuts, workforce shortages, and limited funding have left most agencies unable to meet today’s needs. Declines in service lead to declines in ridership.

Sources of funding for transit (2024)

2024 National Transit Summaries and Trends

Transit in the U.S. is funded through a combination of directly generated revenues and federal, state, and local dollars. Overall, though, funding is heavily tilted toward roads, which are often spent in ways that undermine the limited funds that are spent on transit, such as with highway expansions that direct development away from city centers or by building transit in the middle of highways, which chokes transit ridership and economic growth by limiting development potential and pedestrian access. Since the 1980s, as part of a bargain struck to increase the federal gas tax, federal transportation funding has followed a roughly 80/20 split on transportation spending: 80 percent for highways, 20 percent for transit. While the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act increased funding for transit, and highway funding remained flexible to be used for transit, most states largely kept to that split. This imbalance is baked into how the federal program is structured, what policy innovations are prioritized, and overall, shapes the infrastructure we build.

2024 National Transit Summaries and Trends

Federal funding for transit capital improvements today comes from a patchwork of formula grant programs and competitive award-based grants administered by the Federal Transit Administration (FTA). While operating funds vary by the size of the agency, they are needed to pay the day-to-day cost of running transit. These funds largely come from fares and local and state government sources, leaving service dependent on unsustainable revenue flows. Federal sources for operating funds primarily go to smaller systems or have been made available in response to economic crises. However, the sum of funds dedicated to transit is a fraction of that invested in roads. Funding levels for transit are often set at the level needed to keep transit from failing, rather than building a strong, reliable system that serves people’s daily needs.

America has a robust network of highway infrastructure and boasts the most impressive and extensive road network, by mileage, in the world. Utilizing our national interstate highway system, drivers can start a road trip in Florida and end in Oregon, crossing the nation’s plains, mountains, rivers, and deserts without any concern that road access will be an issue. However, for the vast majority of Americans, our transit infrastructure is so lacking that accessing much of anything in one’s own city or region without a car is a harrowing ordeal, if it’s even possible at all. That’s not the case in much of the rest of the developed world.

Most jurisdictions in the United States severely underfund transit and have left them lurching from crisis to crisis without the policy or funding to properly net the benefits that great transit can unlock. The average U.S. state spent only $166 per capita on transit between 2018 and 2023. With many states failing to act and others actively worsening transit, much of 2025 has been a challenging year for agencies, with many facing fiscal cliffs driven by post-COVID impacts and unstable funding sources requiring intervention.

An additional barrier to achieving transit service parity with other nations is the deferred maintenance backlog. According to recent figures (2025) from the Federal Transit Administration, there is now over $140 billion in deferred maintenance costs to address across the country’s many transit networks. Deferred maintenance can lead to costly delays and interruptions to service, with unexpected equipment failures disrupting commutes, track damage slowing down trains, and poorly maintained facilities resulting in poor public perception.

As a result of this decades-long disinvestment, the average American can expect only a fraction of the quantity and quality of public transportation that citizens of other nations, such as those mentioned earlier, can expect. It should be no surprise that after years of this deprioritization, 51 percent of Americans surveyed in 2023 report that they lack access to transit, according to an analysis of U.S. Census data by the American Society of Civil Engineers.