Executive Overview
As the executive director of the Living Independent Network Corp, Jeremy Maxand spends his days fighting for a fundamental human right that many take for granted: the ability to move freely. Operating out of southern Idaho, Maxand works tirelessly to help residents who do not drive navigate a region where public transit options are sparse, fragmented, and chronically underfunded. His nonprofit organization, which primarily serves individuals with disabilities, relies on a modest annual allocation of $100,000 distributed by the state through federal appropriations. This funding directly finances the transit cards that riders use to pay for their daily travel. Yet, Maxand does not mince words when describing the local infrastructure, characterizing the region’s public transit network as a “bare-minimum lifeline service” and a “piecemeal” arrangement.
Tragically, even this precarious lifeline could soon be severed.
Surface transportation programs across the United States—authorized under the landmark $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) signed by President Joe Biden in 2021—are hurtling toward an expiration deadline at the end of the year. In response, federal lawmakers are actively negotiating the details of the bipartisan BUILD America 250 Act, a legislative package designed to reauthorize these critical programs. While transportation advocates and urban planners initially criticized the Biden-era legislation for failing to meaningfully broaden American mobility options beyond personal automobiles, they now view the proposed BUILD Act as a alarming, significant step backward.
The impending legislation slashes public transit funding by billions of dollars, threatening to strand vulnerable populations, deepen rural isolation, stall urban development, and strain household budgets nationwide. From the remote reaches of Maine and the expansive rural valleys of Idaho to the sprawling suburbs of Indiana and the densely populated boroughs of New York City, transit agencies and advocates are sounding the alarm. Without a drastic course correction from Capitol Hill, millions of Americans risk losing their connection to jobs, healthcare, and community life.
Detailed Chronology
The Post-Pandemic Landscape and the Rise of the IIJA
To understand the gravity of the current legislative battle, one must examine the trajectory of American public transportation over the past decade. Years of chronic underinvestment left the nation’s transit systems in a vulnerable state long before the COVID-19 pandemic struck in early 2020. When lockdowns occurred and remote work policies took effect, ridership plummeted overnight, dealing a devastating blow to farebox revenues—the lifeblood of many urban and regional transit agencies.
Recognizing the existential threat facing public mobility, the federal government stepped in with emergency relief funds, culminating in the passage of the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act in November 2021. The IIJA represented a generational infusion of capital into the nation’s roads, bridges, and public transit networks. For public transit specifically, the legislation provided a baseline funding level of $119.9 billion over five years, injecting much-needed resources into capital projects, vehicle fleet modernizations, and day-to-day operational support.
While progressive and environmental advocates argued that the IIJA still leaned too heavily toward maintaining and expanding highway infrastructure at the expense of sustainable transit, it nonetheless established a critical financial floor. It prevented widespread systemic collapses across municipal transit agencies and allowed rural and tribal communities to maintain baseline services for residents who depend entirely on public options.
The Looming Expiration and the Emergence of the BUILD America 250 Act
As the five-year authorization window of the IIJA draws to a close, federal lawmakers are constitutionally and operationally obligated to pass a reauthorization bill to prevent a complete funding lapse for the nation’s surface transportation systems. Enter the BUILD America 250 Act, a bipartisan legislative vehicle currently being shaped in Congress to chart the nation’s transit policy for the coming half-decade.
Rather than building upon the foundations laid by the IIJA—or scaling up investments to match post-pandemic realities and inflationary pressures—the BUILD America 250 Act moves in the opposite direction. According to an exhaustive analysis by the American Public Transportation Association (APTA), the proposed legislation authorizes a total of $103.3 billion for public transit over a five-year period. This represents a staggering $16.5 billion decrease compared to the $119.9 billion baseline established by the 2021 Jobs Act.
When accounting for cumulative inflation over the intervening years, the funding shortfall becomes even more stark. Economic analysts at the Urban Institute calculate that the BUILD Act would require an additional $24 billion merely to match the purchasing power and funding levels of the previous authorization. Consequently, under the current text of the bill, every single U.S. state would experience a reduction of at least $10 million in federal formula funding over the five-year lifecycle of the legislation.
Supporting Context & Metrics
The Threat to Capital Investment and Major Projects
The ramifications of a $16.5 billion funding reduction extend far beyond day-to-day bus operations; they threaten the future of long-term infrastructure development. Yonah Freemark, a researcher with the Urban Institute, emphasizes that the cuts will disproportionately impact initiatives requiring capital investment funding.
“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,” Freemark explained. These capital projects—ranging from light rail expansions and Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) corridors to zero-emission fleet transitions—take years of planning and require guaranteed federal backing to break ground. A contraction in federal formula and competitive grants stalls these projects indefinitely, freezing modernization efforts in growing metropolitan regions.
Dispelling the Urban Bias: The Rural and Tribal Reality
A persistent misconception in national policy circles is that public transportation is an exclusively urban phenomenon, inextricably linked to subterranean subway systems in metropolises like New York City or Chicago. Freemark argues that this narrative obscures the critical reality of mobility in America’s heartland.
“Public transit is often portrayed as something that is subways in New York City,” Freemark noted. “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.”
Unlike major city agencies that can leverage diverse local tax bases, advertising revenue, and substantial farebox collections, rural and tribal transit systems operate on razor-thin margins. They depend almost entirely on federal formula grants to keep vehicles on the road, meaning that even fractional reductions in Washington translate directly to canceled routes, reduced operating hours, and total service desertification.
State-by-State Impact Analysis
Idaho: The Nation’s Deepest Percentage Cut
No state faces a steeper percentage decline in federal formula transit funding than Idaho. According to Urban Institute projections, the Gem State stands to lose 18 percent of its federal transit support under the BUILD America 250 Act.
For advocates like Jeremy Maxand, this cut is existential. Local municipalities and county governments in rural Idaho possess severely constrained legal and financial mechanisms to raise revenue for public services.
“When the federal funding goes away, everything goes away,” Maxand warned. For elderly residents and individuals with physical disabilities, the vanishing of local transit options does not merely mean an inconvenience; it translates to profound social isolation. Without accessible transport, vulnerable citizens find themselves trapped in their homes, leaving their residences exclusively for emergency medical appointments.
Maine: Compounding Shortfalls and Infrastructure Gaps
Maine faces a similarly dire trajectory, with federal formula funding projected to drop by 16 percent. Josh Caldwell, a co-facilitator of Transportation for Maine and an advocate with the Natural Resources Council of Maine, points out that the state’s transit network is already operating well below desired standards.
“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.
This impending federal squeeze arrives while the Maine Department of Transportation is already grappling with a staggering $400 million transportation funding shortfall. This fiscal hole was widened by declining state gas tax revenues, exacerbated by a 2011 legislative decision to freeze the state gas tax relative to inflation. With approximately 38 percent of Maine’s transit operating budget originating from the federal government, local agencies have virtually no internal reserve funds to absorb a double-digit federal funding cut.
Indiana: Fleet Aging and Over-Subscribed Rural Services
While Indiana features urban centers like Indianapolis, the state’s transit challenges span the entire spectrum of population density. Austin Gibble, a transit planner based in Indianapolis, explains that the impending federal cuts could force the regional transit agency, IndyGo, to delay vital bus acquisitions, forcing the system to rely on aging, increasingly unreliable vehicles that drive up maintenance costs.
However, Gibble shares Maxand’s acute anxiety regarding rural and suburban fringes. “Rural agencies in Indiana are already horrifically oversubscribed,” Gibble stated. In Hamilton County—the most populous county in Indiana currently lacking a fixed-route public transit service—residents must rely on reservation-based transit services like Hamilton County Express. Due to overwhelming demand and chronic underfunding, the waitlist for a single ride can stretch for weeks, a situation that will only deteriorate under the BUILD Act.
New York City: Billions in Lost Revenue
The impact of the legislation is not confined to rural America; major metropolitan transit hubs will absorb massive absolute losses. The Urban Institute estimates that New York City alone would lose $2.3 billion in federal transit support over the five-year authorization period.
Official Statements
The debate over the BUILD America 250 Act has exposed deep ideological fractures within Congress regarding the federal government’s responsibility toward infrastructure and community investment.
Representative Jerry Nadler, a Democrat representing portions of New York City, stood as the lone dissenting vote on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, aggressively opposing the bill. In a sharply worded public statement, Nadler condemned the legislation’s prioritization of highways over multi-modal transit networks.
“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 stated.
Transportation advocates echoed Nadler’s frustration with the legislative compromises embedded in the bill. Danny Pearlstein, policy and communications director at the Riders Alliance, argued that lawmakers are exhibiting a failure of imagination by accepting austerity politics in the name of bipartisanship.
“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 role of government to invest in people and communities.”
LeeAnn Hall, campaign manager for the Alliance for a Just Society’s National Campaign for Transit Justice, framed the transit debate squarely around the issue of economic affordability for working-class families. Hall noted that transportation currently ranks as the second-highest household expenditure for American families, trailing only housing.
When public transit systems degrade or contract, Hall explained, low- and middle-income households are often compelled to shoulder the immense financial burden of purchasing, insuring, and maintaining a personal automobile.
“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,” Hall said, emphasizing how auto dependency expands household budgets and deepens economic precarity. Furthermore, Hall argued that robust public transit yields universal societal dividends: “Every dollar that we invest in public transit reduces congestion numbers, makes driving safer, and creates opportunities for families to have options.”
Future Outlook
As Congress hammers out the final parameters of the BUILD America 250 Act ahead of the year-end expiration deadline, transit providers and community advocates across the United States are preparing for a difficult fiscal reality.
In southern Idaho, Jeremy Maxand continues his daily advocacy, striving to secure alternative mobility solutions for residents who cannot drive. Yet, he does so under the shadow of rising operational costs, noting that fuel prices—particularly diesel—continue to hover at punishing levels, eating away at already depleted non-profit budgets.
Maxand warns that federal lawmakers are committing a policy error with potentially fatal human consequences, reserving his sharpest critique for the disconnect between Washington budget-writers and the citizens who rely on these services to survive.
Drawing a stark medical parallel, Maxand summarized the short-sightedness of the proposed funding cuts with blunt precision:
“It’s like saying you’re not going to pay for electricity to power the ventilator, but you’re going to leave the ventilator. What are we doing here? This is not sustainable.”
Unless federal legislators heed the warnings of transit economists, regional planners, and local advocates by restoring baseline funding and accounting for inflation, the upcoming expiration of the IIJA threatens to pull the plug on mobility networks nationwide. For millions of Americans in rural hollows, suburban cul-de-sacs, and urban centers alike, the future of independence, employment, and community access hangs precariously in the balance.
