The House Transportation and Infrastructure (T&I) Committee has gotten dozens of bills referred to them this Congress that would seek to amend existing programs and policies or create new ones, which they’ll be considering as they hammer out the final details for the reauthorization bill.

Those referrals also include two bills introduced just this week, both by T&I members, which may signal intent to offer amendments at markup, or even may be language already added to an agreed up package, introduced separately to ensure the sponsor receives credit. One of those bills, from Reps. Salud Carbajal (D, CA) and Blake Moore (R, UT) would amend section 5336 of title 49, to change apportionments to separate out apportionments to urbanized areas of population over 1 million individuals from apportionments to medium-sized cities of 200,000 up to 1 million, with the number of the agency’s transit performance measures (e.g. the number of types of transit asset classes) serving as a basis for distribution. the other, from Rep. Hilary Scholten (D, MI) to “provide regulatory relief for transit agencies.”

By and large, review of the transit bills introduced show two key themes that will likely shape the T&I transit title: affordability and agency finances, including greater flexibility for operating assistance; and safety, both for riders and transit operators. Outside of these priority areas, there are also several notable bills on project delivery, TOD (transit oriented development) and housing, workforce, and Chinese competition that could likely be included in a final bill.

Affordability and Agency Finances

Several bills seek to provide greater funding and support for transit agency operating expenses, for which there is some eligibility in current law but largely limited to smaller urbanized or rural areas. Rep. Mike Lawler (R, NY), in the Transit Funding Flexibility Act with 9 other Republican cosponsors, would amend the Section 5307 Urbanized Area formula grants to remove the language that limits operating costs eligibility to small urbanized areas, making it an eligible expense for all 5307 recipients, including those serving populations of more than 200,000 population individuals.  (This would restore the status quo for operating subsidies that existed 1974-1998, before the TEA21 law got rid of operating subsidies for large metro areas.)

Another bill focused on operating expense is also almost entirely partisan – the Stronger Communities through Better Transit Act from Rep. Hank Johnson (D, GA) has 146 cosponsors including one Republican – Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R, PA) – and would address operating expenses through a $20 billion program per year new formula program that would apportion funding such that each urbanized area would receive 50 percent of their annual operating costs and states would also receive an amount equal to 50 percent of their subrecipients’ average operating costs, and any remaining funds would be proportionally distributed also based on operating costs, capped at 80% of an agency’s operating costs.

Agencies could then use the funding both for operating costs and also for projects that would improve service and increase ridership, such as changes to decrease headways, expanding operation times, improving reliability.

Another version of language to support agency operations and affordability is the Freedom to Move Act from Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D, MA), which has 26 Democratic cosponsors, which would establish competitive grants funded at $5 billion per year to implement fare-free transit programs, although funds could be used for other bus stop and bus lane improvements, and could also be used to defray the costs of operational expenses to meet demands of increased ridership.

Safety

The Administration has made concerns about transit system safety an emphasis area, and numerous bills seek to address the issue in a variety of ways, including focuses on both transit passengers as well as operators.

Several bills propose grant funding to address safety. The Safe and Affordable Transit Act from Reps. Laura Friedman (D, CA) and Nicole Malliotakis (R, NY), a bipartisan bill with 3 other cosponsors (1 R, 2 D) would authorize a $50 million competitive grant program for agencies to hire transit police and improve physical infrastructure to promote passenger and operator safety. The RIDER Safety Act introduced by Rep. Lateefa Simon (D, CA) with 16 Democratic cosponsors, would expand the Secretary’s authority under Section 5338 of Title 49 to make grants for ‘transit support specialist’ e.g. unarmed personnel who would improve security for transit riders by engaging with the public, and deterring and reporting disruptive behavior. Such personnel would report suspicious activity and security threats to law enforcement but also de-escalate conflicts and handle minor, non-criminal conflicts themselves.

Other proposals would use federal requirements to improve safety. The bipartisan Bus Operator Safety and Security Act bill from Reps. Shomari Figures (D, AL) and Jeff VanDrew (R, NJ) with 17 other cosponsors, would require all new buses to be built with barriers around the bus operators that reach from the floor to ceiling and are capable of fully enclosing the workstation, unless waived by a union representing the plurality of the frontline workforce.

Rep. David Min (D, CA) in the Safe Transit for All Act with 3 cosponsors, would require the national transit database to collect data on street harassment on public transit systems targeted at passengers. Reps. Lloyd Sucker (R, PA) and Burgess Owens (R, UT), in the Safe Transit Accountability Act, would add clarifying direction to 49 U.S.C. § 5329. That section already requires transit agencies in large urbanized areas to establish a safety committee and develop a Public Transportation Agency Safety Plan. Under their bill, an accountable executive would make the final decision of whether to implement the recommended risk-based mitigation or other strategies.

Project Delivery

Several bills seek to extend existing project delivery flexibility enjoyed by State DOTs and highway projects to transit agencies. Fors instance Reps. Mike Kennedy (R – UT) and Greg Stanton (D- AZ) introduced the Streamline Transit Projects Act to allow transit agencies to assume responsibility for categorical exclusion determinations. The Modal Parity in Permitting Act from Reps. Dina Titus (D, NV), Robert Bresnahan (R, PA), and Laura Freidman (D, CA) would allow advance acquisition of real property interests for corridor preservation for transit projects and for rail projects, allowing them to acquire property prior to completion of environmental reviews, similar to the authority that state DOTs already enjoy.

Competition with China

FTA funds are already subject to a ban on procuring rolling stock from Chinese companies. Reps. Rick Crawford (R, AR) and Ro Kanna (D, CA) would expand the nature of that exclusion in the Stop China Act. Under their bill, federal funds could also not be used to purchase rolling stock from companies whose principal place of business is in China, and also companies for which a “covered individual” possesses any decision making power. Covered individuals are defined in the bill as any individual who is an agent or employee of China or whose activities are financed or subsidized in majority part by China, or anyone who is a Chinese citizen or resident and is not a citizen or permanent resident of the US. Their bill also expands the covered funding to include any appropriations to the Department, not just the FTA funding.

Housing

The House and Senate are currently working to resolve differences on the ROAD to Housing Act, which has passed the House and Senate and if remaining differences are successfully resolved, may be soon enacted. In the House, committee jurisdictions make it difficult to consider transportation policy and housing policy in the same bill. But this is not the case in the Senate, where mass transit and housing answer to the same authorizing committee. Several bills have been introduced that focus on the housing and transportation nexus.

The Build More Housing Near Transit Act of 2025, led by Reps. Scott Peters (D, CA) and Blake Moore (R, UT) has 14 cosponsors equally divided between Republicans and Democrats and would adjust the Capital Investment Grants (New Starts) project justification criteria to create an incentive for state and local actions to build housing. Specifically, the bill would allow the Secretary to increase the rating of a transit project if the applicant has documented pro-housing policies, including a state or local action to remove barriers to constructing housing, and action to reduce or eliminated parking minimums, reducing lot sizes, increasing height limits, and other policies.

A bill from Reps. Laura Friedman (D, CA) and Mike Lawler (R, NY) seeks to tweak the existing eligibilities for TOD in the TIFIA and RRIF program that have been unutilized since they were added in the FAST Act. Their bill, the Build HUBS Act would define creditworthiness assessment specifically for TOD projects and provide some flexibility on the need for an investment-grade rating. Their bill also adds a more specific definition of transit-oriented development project.

Another challenge for implementing the TOD provisions of TIFIA has been the environmental review procedures at USDOT, which poorly fit a housing and TOD project, and the lack of multimodal NEPA implementing procedures in the Build America Bureau, which has generally relied on the operating administrations’ regulations for environmental review according to the project type. The Build HUBS Act would create a legislative categorical exclusion for transit-oriented development projects and also exempt land acquisition from NEPA review. Currently the TIFIA TOD provisions are also limited to 15 percent of the amounts made available for TIFIA; their bill would strike that limitation.

APTA Legislative Priorities

Outside of House bills, the APTA legislative proposals released earlier this year may also be a source of ideas for a final bill. APTA’s proposals focus largely on financing changes to facilitate capital projects, including increasing the cap on Private Activity Bonds (PABs) for qualified transportation facilities—currently set at $30 billion which has been fully allocated. APTA would also propose to remove mass-commuting facilities from the state volume cap for PABs, and further to expand eligibility of the mass-commuting facilities to include acquisition of buses and railcars. APTA has a variety of other priorities in the tax space, including support for restoration of tax-exempt advance refunding bonds that were eliminated in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, and also new tax credits to support value capture. (None of these provisions would be jurisdictional to the T&I bill, as the Ways and Means Committee has jurisdiction for these tax code changes.)

APTA also recommends program consolidation that implicitly propose to eliminate the Low or No Emission Bus Program, without explicitly stating it as such. Their proposal suggests “streamlining FTA programmatic structures to increase flexibility for agencies” by consolidating the Section 5339 Bus and Bus Facilities programs (which includes Low-No) “into one formula grant program and one competitive grant program” which would fund buses of all propulsion types “at the option of the public transit agency.”

APTA’s proposal would increase funding for the public transit programs entirely through contract authority rather than by continuing the advance appropriation structure of IIJA. Their proposal would increase contract authority from the current $14.6 billion in FY26 to $23.2 billion on average per year over the next five years, which zeroing out the advance appropriation of $4.3 billion per year.