Transit's federal funding lapses in 82 days — its bus drivers are already quitting fastest of any transportation job

Two clocks are running on U.S. public transit, and neither is close to zero.▸ The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act set federal transit funding at $21.4 billion a year, on average, for FY2022 through FY2026 — and that authorization expires September 30, 2026, 82 days from this piece's publication, with no successor law enacted. Separately, the workforce that actually runs the buses and trains is not waiting for Congress: bus drivers on transit and intercity routes post the highest annual separation rate of any transportation occupation tracked by federal labor statisticians, and they are the lowest-paid job function in the industry they keep moving.

The IIJA's public transportation title provided about a 67% increase in nominal annual funding over the prior law, the FAST Act, which averaged $12.8 billion a year from FY2016 through FY2021.▸ That increase lifted the program to $21.4 billion a year — but the increase, and the law that authorized it, both run out on September 30, 2026. The leading replacement so far is the BUILD America 250 Act (H.R. 8870), marked up and ordered reported by the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure on May 22, 2026. As currently written, it would provide contract authority averaging $17.5 billion a year — lower than current law, and without the multiyear advance appropriations that let transit agencies plan capital projects years out.

Underneath the authorization fight sits a narrower, more mechanical problem: the Highway Trust Fund's mass transit account, which has historically supplied about 80% of program funding, is running down faster than it takes in.▸ The Congressional Budget Office's June 2026 baseline projects the account will collect about $7.0 billion a year in FY2027–FY2031 — including the flexed transfer already scheduled from the highway account — against outlays of $17.4 billion to $18.1 billion a year. That is a five-year gap of $53.4 billion, an average of $10.7 billion annually. The Federal Transit Administration says it needs a floor of at least $1 billion in the account to keep making mandated payments to transit agencies; CBO estimates the balance will approach that floor sometime in FY2027 without further general-fund transfers, which would force FTA to slow payments to agencies nationwide.

Fare revenue is not filling the gap.▸ Fare revenue per trip fell from $2.03 in 2019 to $1.53 in 2024 in inflation-adjusted terms, and total fare revenue collected dropped from $20.2 billion in 2019 to $11.8 billion in 2024 — even as ridership recovered from a pandemic-era low of 4.5 billion trips (2021) to about 8.1 billion trips in 2025, still short of the roughly 10.0 billion annual trips taken in 2018 and 2019.

Federal projections do not show a transit workforce collapse — the Bureau of Labor Statistics expects employment of bus drivers, transit and intercity to grow modestly, from 158,800 jobs in 2024 to 165,600 in 2034, a 4% increase, with a median annual wage of $57,440 in May 2024.▸ What the projections do show is churn: the Transit Workforce Center's analysis of BLS occupational separation data finds that transit and intercity bus drivers have the highest projected annual separation rate — 12.4% — of any transportation occupation the agency tracks. In some occupations, including bus operators, TWC notes that total projected openings over 2024–2034 will exceed the entire 2024 workforce in that occupation, meaning agencies will need to fill more seats through departures and growth combined than currently exist.

Pay tracks with who leaves.▸ TWC's analysis of National Transit Database wage data shows vehicle operations — the job function that includes bus and rail operators — was the lowest-paid function across U.S. transit agencies in 2024, averaging $37.49 an hour, against $43.81 for facility maintenance and $47.51 for general administration.

This piece covers the national federal funding and workforce picture; individual transit agencies' local budgets, union contracts, and service levels vary and are not addressed here.