Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

19. Department of Transportation · Notable · Needs Congress

Redefine public transit as transit provided for the public, not by a municipality

Not started

635 19. Department of Transportation

“A better definition for public transit (which also would require congressional legislation) would be transit provided for the public rather than transit provided by a public municipality.”

What has happened

  1. Not started

    The statutory definition of public transportation at 49 U.S.C. 5302 is unchanged, and no bill in the 119th Congress proposes to redefine it as transit provided for the public rather than by a public body. Congress legislated on transit twice in the window without touching the definition: the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2026 funds the Federal Transit Administration's formula and Capital Investment Grants programs on the existing definition, and FTA's own 2025-2026 rulemakings (Charter Service, School Bus Operations, Private Investment Project Procedures) leave it in place.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

  • Corpus bill-title sweep found transit bills on crime, captions, language access, affordability, microtransit and project streamlining; none amends 49 U.S.C. 5302. Federal Register full-text search for the quoted phrase “Urban Mass Transportation Act” returns three FTA documents, all of them citing it only as the source authority for existing program regulations.
  • Checked 2026-09-03 against the two instruments that govern CIG and DOT economic analysis, both read in full: DOT Order 2100.7 of 2025-01-29 (transportation.gov/sites/dot.gov/files/2025-02/DOT_2100.7-Ensuring_Reliance_Upon_Sound_Economic_Analysis_in_DOT_Policies.pdf) and FTA’s November 2025 CIG Policy Guidance (transit.dot.gov/sites/fta.dot.gov/files/2025-11/CIG-Policy-Guidance-November-2025.pdf). Neither touches this ask. The word “transit” appears in the Order only in the phrase “Federal Transit Administration’s Capital Investment Grant program”, and the guidance contains no occurrence of “Urban Mass Transportation”, no redefinition of public transportation, and no eligibility change for non-municipal providers. The negative for this ask now reaches the binding CIG guidance itself and not only the Federal Register.
  • FTA’s Private Investment Project Procedures rule (proposed 2025-07-01, final 2026-06-04) makes it easier for private partners to participate in projects, but it works within the existing definition rather than changing who counts as a transit provider - so it is context, not a step on this ask.
Action
other
Object
Statutory definition of public transit
ID
1745