Want to Use Highway Dollars for Transit? These Places Already Do

Federal transportation funding is highly flexible, as we’ve pointed out; most of the federal highway funds that states and Metropolitan Planning Organizations receive can pay for public transit projects. Unfortunately, most states rarely exercise this power, forgoing an important tool for funding transit. A recent report from the National Cooperative Highway Research Program shines a light on this issue, revealing that by one measure, states “flexed” less than 4%¹ of their federal highway funds for transit projects between 2013 and 2020.