Operating and Capital Funding Time Series

Who pays for U.S. public transit

Federal, state and local money for every agency that reports to the National Transit Database, 1991 to 2024, split between running the service and building it.

Total funding, 2024
$100.4B
operating and capital together
Running the service
$71.05B
70.8% of the total
Building it
$29.35B
29.2% of the total
Federal share of operating
17.1%
peaked at 38.4% in 2022

The federal share of operating money

What share of the cost of running U.S. transit came from Washington, 1991 to 2024

For three decades Washington paid between three and nine cents of every operating dollar. Federal law has long restricted operating assistance in larger urbanized areas, which is why the line sits so low for so long: federal money goes to building transit, not running it. The pandemic relief acts suspended that arrangement, and the share went to 38.4% in 2022. What the chart shows after that is the money running out.

Money to run the service

Operating funding by source, in the dollars of each year

Money to build it

Capital funding by source, in the dollars of each year

The same money, in today's dollars

Restated with CPI-U so 1991 and 2024 can be compared

Thirty-four years of nominal dollars cannot be compared without this. Both series are restated in 2024 money, using CPI-U, U.S. city average, all items.

Largest recipients, 2024

Total funding, operating and capital. A count of dollars, which tracks size.

# Agency Total Operating Capital Federal Local
1 $16.76B $12.33B $4.42B 25.1% 13.4%
2
Washington Metro
Washington, DC
$4.99B $3.09B $1.9B 20.5% 43.1%
3
Los Angeles Metro
Los Angeles, CA
$4.41B $2.43B $1.98B 23% 54.9%
4 $4.07B $3.02B $1.04B 43% 3.9%
5 $3.89B $2.38B $1.51B 11.3% 4.8%
6 $3.41B $2.58B $825.6M 42.3% 32.6%
7 $3.34B $2.4B $938.6M 8.7% 16.3%
8 $2.77B $1.95B $819.9M 9.9% 21.4%
9 $2.42B $1.67B $749.6M 25.3% 14%
10
Sound Transit
Seattle, WA
$2.26B $735.2M $1.52B 12% 72.6%
11
SF BART
Oakland, CA
$2.02B $1.13B $895.3M 16.1% 56.5%
12
Baltimore MTA
Baltimore, MD
$1.77B $1.07B $695.3M 28.5% 0%
13 $1.56B $1.02B $541.9M 27.1% 64.5%
14
Chicago Metra
Chicago, IL
$1.46B $1B $460.3M 49.2% 39%
15 $1.44B $1.23B $218.2M 3.8% 58.1%
16 $1.43B $1.16B $261.3M 23% 50.7%
17
MTA Bus Company
New York, NY
$1.19B $908.3M $283.8M 5.7% 66.8%
18
Metro Transit
Minneapolis, MN
$1.13B $519.8M $609.9M 27.6% 30.2%
19
RTD-Denver
Denver, CO
$1.09B $1.03B $54.7M 5.7% 80.2%
20 $1.08B $821.4M $258.5M 12% 73.9%
21
Houston METRO
Houston, TX
$1.06B $869.3M $189.1M 20.1% 70.6%
22 $1.04B $553.1M $489.5M 7.4% 56.8%
23
Portland TriMet
Portland, OR
$994.9M $812.3M $182.6M 20.2% 62.4%
24 $943M $598.8M $344.2M 9.6% 0%
25 $884M $440.9M $443.1M 19.9% 61.7%

What this counts, and what it does not

  • Fares are not here. FTA removed fare revenue from the funding series in the 2022 release. "Directly generated" means money an agency raises or is given outside the farebox — advertising, concessions, park and ride, non-transportation revenue — plus taxes an agency levies itself. Fares appear on each agency's own page, where the series carries them back to 2015.
  • Funding is not spending. These are the sources an agency reported drawing on in a year. Capital money in particular is committed in one year and spent over several, so a single agency's capital line is lumpy by nature.
  • Reporters come and go. The national totals here cover agencies that still appear in the current NTD roster. FTA's own published grand total for each year is slightly higher, by about seven tenths of a percent, and the difference is agencies that stopped reporting years ago.
  • Shares need no adjustment; levels do. A source's share of one year's money is a ratio within that year, so inflation does not touch it. Any chart of dollar amounts across years on this page is either labelled as the dollars of its own year or restated in 2024 money.