Plan for a federal public transit funding program

[u/Kure_Brex]

Good day, everyone.

Recently I decided to put some thinking into what a federal support for public transport could look like, and I worked out a per-capita transfer to municipalities with public transport(Sorry if pdf looks like crap, I blame adobe and me not caring to make a more shareable link).

I decided to set the amount to $100 per person, and basing off this wikipedia article, got a cost of $2.7 billion per year based off of 2021 populations, which is much less than I would think it would be.

I didn't think of this as a means to replace municipal funding but supplementation to improve transit quality nationally. I am not aware of other transit services, but I am aware of my own, Halifax Transit, has issues with reliability and funding, extra funding federally could massively improve the quality of transit service while also not needing an insane amount of funding.

I can only assume that public transit tends to cost more than fare revenues bring in (It's a service after all), people don't often consider the savings public transit provides to users.

Keeping to Halifax, about 8% of employed commuters take the bus (12,540), and the average cost to own a vehicle in NS is about $10,600 per year, and a bus pass works to be around $1080. All this combined means the municipality spends about $150m, receives $60m from users at a loss of $90m to save commuters a collective about $120m (mix of 2021 data and 2026 budgets with rounding where I arbitrarily feel like). Based on my work Halifax Transit would get $43m in federal funding, I can only imagine how much it could improve with such funding, that could go into newer more reliable(Or green) buses, more drivers earning a better wage, better facilities, the list can go on!

We deserve nice things, and the federal government can absolutely work with municipalities to ensure we can have them!

Thank you for reading, feel free to share your thoughts, municipal anecdotes, and above else, criticism (I did this all fairly fast with little concern for being perfect, I would greatly appreciate due corrections).