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News and Views: Five Days That Tell You Everything About American Transit Right Now
- Rick L'Amie
- May 26
- 4 min read
May 26, 2026
Last week was one of those weeks where the whole map of American public transportation showed up at once. A 580-billion-dollar transportation bill cleared a House committee. New York's congestion pricing turned in a first-year report card that's hard to argue with. California floated a freeway bus that goes 140 miles an hour. And in Salt Lake City, the people who actually drive the buses gathered to find out who's the best at it.
Four stories. One through-line. Here's what mattered.
Congress Just Wrote the Next Five Years
On Monday, May 18th, House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Sam Graves and Ranking Member Rick Larsen released the text of the BUILD America 250 Act — a bipartisan, five-year surface transportation reauthorization bill that authorizes roughly $580 billion across roads, bridges, transit, and rail. After a fifteen-hour markup on Thursday, the committee advanced it on a 61-2 vote.
The bill includes the largest-ever federal investment in bridges and introduces new annual registration fees on electric vehicles ($130) and plug-in hybrids ($35) to help shore up the Highway Trust Fund. Unlike the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, though, BA250 does not include General Fund advance appropriations. Translation: about $106 billion of that headline number would be subject to annual appropriations fights in Congress.
Why it matters: A bipartisan 61-2 vote out of committee is real news in 2026 — the kind of thing that rarely happens anymore. But guaranteed contract authority and money that has to be appropriated each year are not the same thing, and transit advocates will be watching the Senate carefully. The current authorization expires September 30th. The clock is real.
New York's Congestion Pricing: The Receipts Are In
It's been just over a year since New York City became the first American city to charge vehicles for entering its central business district during peak hours. And this week, the numbers came in.
According to MTA reporting and new analysis from the NYU Rudin Center for Transportation, the program generated $578 million in its first year alone — every dollar of it directed toward public transit restoration and improvements. Subway ridership grew 7.7 percent across 2025. Bus speeds and ridership are up inside the congestion zone. Lower Manhattan traffic is measurably lighter.
The Trump administration is still fighting in court to end the program. The program is still operating.
Why it matters: Congestion pricing was always going to be judged on results, not promises. A year in, the results are unambiguous — more transit riders, less traffic, hundreds of millions of dollars flowing into the system that moves the city. The political fight will continue. The data is no longer in dispute.
California's 140-MPH Bus Idea
And then there's this one. Caltrans confirmed this week that it's studying so-called "bullet buses" that would travel up to 140 miles per hour on dedicated freeway lanes between Los Angeles and San Francisco. The pitch: rail-like speeds without the decades-long timeline and cost of building actual high-speed rail. Existing right-of-way. Automated guidance. Articulated coaches.
The transit press has been, to put it gently, skeptical.
Why it matters: California is already building high-speed rail. It's expensive, it's slow, and it's behind schedule — but it exists, and the right answer to that situation is to finish it. Studying a 140-mph bus on a freeway is the kind of idea that sounds visionary in a press release and dissolves the moment you ask what happens when one of these things has a flat tire at airline speed. There is no shortcut to a train. If you want a train, build a train.
The Best Bus Drivers in North America
While Washington was writing bills and California was floating concepts, the actual operators of America's transit systems gathered in Salt Lake City for something a lot more concrete.
From May 17th through the 20th, the American Public Transportation Association held its 2026 Mobility Conference and International Bus Roadeo, hosted by the Utah Transit Authority. The Roadeo brought together 94 transit agencies, 80 drivers, and 49 maintenance teams competing in events that measure safety, efficiency, and professionalism — both behind the wheel and under the hood. The conference itself drew hundreds of bus and paratransit professionals. APTA crowned LA Metro as the Bus Roadeo Grand Champion. Quite a feat in the city known for its car culture.
Why it matters: Every conversation about transit eventually comes back to a person. The person who shows up at 4:30 a.m. to drive the first bus. The mechanic who keeps it running. The dispatcher who solves the morning's problems before most of us have made coffee. The Roadeo is how the industry says thank you — and it's a useful reminder that policy and infrastructure only work because people make them work.
The Through-Line
Look at these four stories together and you see the whole stack of American public transportation in a single week. Congress is writing the law. New York is generating the data. California is floating the ideas. And in Salt Lake City, the people on the ground are doing the work. Policy matters. Results matter. Speed matters. But none of it works without people — and that's true at every level, from the operator to the rider.
Coming Up on Transportopia
Next time, we're taking the show on the road. I'm heading to New York City to ride the subway with my daughter, Lauren L'Amie, who left our hometown of Austin, Texas ten years ago for Brooklyn and has lived car-free ever since.
Ten years without a car in America. What does that actually look like? What does it cost? What does it give you back?
We'll find out together — on the train, on the way to her job.
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Listen to this week's News and Views episode here.
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