The Freedom to Move Act directs the Secretary of Transportation to establish a competitive grant program—called Freedom to Move Grants—to help state, county, and local governments, transit agencies, and eligible rural nonprofits implement fare‑free public transportation and expand service. Grants are intended to cover lost fare revenue and to finance improvements such as safety upgrades, bus network redesigns, and operational costs tied to increased ridership.
The bill ties funding to an equity‑focused application and reporting regime: applicants must document outreach and partnership plans, produce an equity evaluation with specific metrics, describe current fare‑evasion enforcement and how they will end criminalization, and estimate new operational costs. That combination pushes local agencies to pair fare elimination with deliberate service redesign and data collection rather than leave fare‑free pilots as isolated experiments.
At a Glance
What It Does
The Secretary awards competitive Freedom to Move Grants to eligible entities to replace fare income and pay for transit improvements and operational scale‑up. Grants run for five years and may fund capital, safety, staffing, and service‑planning activities tied to fare‑free operation.
Who It Affects
Eligible applicants include States, counties, local municipalities, public transit agencies, private rural nonprofit operators, and partnerships among those entities. Direct beneficiaries include low‑income riders, foster care youth, and residents of underserved communities; affected professionals include transit planners, operators, and local government finance and enforcement units.
Why It Matters
This creates a federal mechanism to underwrite fare elimination while forcing agencies to document equity impacts and community engagement. The bill could change how jurisdictions fund and design bus networks, and it sets a federal reporting standard for measuring whether fare‑free policies close mobility gaps.
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What This Bill Actually Does
The bill creates a single, competitive grant program to help jurisdictions implement fare‑free public transit and to pay for the service changes that fare elimination usually requires. It defines who can apply—States, counties, municipalities, transit agencies, eligible rural nonprofits, and partnerships—and limits covered services to regularly scheduled shared‑ride surface transit (explicitly excluding intercity rail, intercity bus, charter, school, sightseeing, and intra‑facility shuttles).
Applications must do more than ask for revenue replacement. Each applicant must describe how it will implement fare‑free access, lay out a bus network redesign (if appropriate) that prioritizes low‑income and historically underserved communities and connectivity to critical services, and show how it will consult and partner with community groups, disability advocates, education institutions, labor, housing agencies, and workforce boards.
Applicants also must submit an equity evaluation with named metrics—average commute times for drivers and non‑drivers, ridership by mode and demographic group (including foster care youth and people with disabilities), route lengths, and delay times—and an estimate of increased operational costs (fuel, personnel, maintenance).The bill requires applicants to disclose their current fare‑evasion enforcement regime—fines, whether violations are criminal or civil, and disaggregated enforcement numbers by age, race, gender, and disability—and to explain how they will end criminalization related to fare evasion. Awarded grants run for five years; the Secretary must award funds to both rural and urbanized areas.
Permissible uses include revenue replacement, safety and accessibility improvements (stops, signage, shelters), painted bus lanes and signal priority, street redesign, hiring and training staff, and bus network redesign work.Within three years of funds being made available, the Secretary must collect data from grantees and publish a report that cross‑tabulates demographics (race, ethnicity, sex, median household income) and tracks progress toward closing the equity gaps identified in applications. The bill also sets a multi‑year funding authorization to support the program, leaving implementation details—such as the Secretary’s specific selection criteria and how long operational gains must be sustained—to agency rulemaking and grant guidance.
The Five Things You Need to Know
The bill creates competitive "Freedom to Move Grants" that explicitly cover lost fare revenue and pay for service and safety improvements tied to fare‑free transit.
Eligible applicants include States, counties, local municipalities, transit agencies, private nonprofit rural operators, or partnerships of those entities.
Grants are awarded for a fixed five‑year period and the Secretary must fund projects in both rural and urbanized areas.
Applications must include an equity evaluation with named metrics (commute times, ridership disaggregated by mode and demographic group including foster care youth, route lengths, delay times) and a plan to end the criminalization of fare evasion.
The bill authorizes $5,000,000,000 per year for fiscal years 2026 through 2030 and requires a Secretary’s report within three years that cross‑tabulates demographic data and progress toward closing transit equity gaps.
Section-by-Section Breakdown
Every bill we cover gets an analysis of its key sections.
Short title
Provides the Act’s name: the Freedom to Move Act. Practically this is boilerplate, but it signals the bill’s framing—mobility as a public good—and is the label agencies and grantees will use in guidance and outreach.
Purpose
States dual purposes: (1) to invest in state, county, and local efforts to provide fare‑free transit, and (2) to support expanding safe, accessible, reliable mass transit to improve community livability. This frames the program as both revenue replacement and an opportunity for systemic service changes, which the Secretary must weigh when designing selection criteria.
Definitions and scope
Defines key terms that limit program reach: who counts as an eligible entity, how ‘‘public transportation’’ is defined (regular shared‑ride surface services open to the public or to defined groups), and what counts as an underserved community (communities without existing routes or infrequent service, situated in census tracts that are both low‑income and communities of color). The definition section also clarifies that intercity rail, intercity bus, school buses, and similar services are not eligible—so funds target local mobility rather than long‑distance travel.
Grant awards, competitive process, and applicant types
Directs the Secretary to set up competitive Freedom to Move Grants and to begin awards within 360 days of enactment. The Secretary has discretion over application timing and form, but must consider both urban and rural projects in award decisions. Eligible entities are broadly drawn, enabling single jurisdictions, transit agencies, rural nonprofits, or multi‑party partnerships to apply. The competitive design gives the Department latitude to prefer projects that combine fare elimination with demonstrable service improvements and equity outcomes.
Permissible uses of funds
Lists specific allowable spending: lost fare revenue; bus stop accessibility and safety; pedestrian and bike shelters; signage; painted bus lanes and signal priority systems; street redesign; operational costs tied to increased ridership (fuel, personnel, maintenance); hiring and training; and conducting a network redesign. The emphasis on both capital and operating expenses means funds can be used to address immediate operational scaling needs as well as physical improvements necessary to sustain higher ridership.
Reporting and funding authorization
Requires a Secretary’s report within three years after funds are provided, collecting data on demographics and tracking progress against the equity evaluation in each application; demographic reporting must be disaggregated and cross‑tabulated by race, ethnicity, sex, and household median income. Authorizes $5 billion annually for FY2026–2030. The reporting and authorization provisions create explicit expectations about measurable equity outcomes while providing a clear federal funding envelope for implementation.
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Explore Transportation in Codify Search →Who Benefits and Who Bears the Cost
Every bill creates winners and losers. Here's who stands to gain and who bears the cost.
Who Benefits
- Low‑income riders and residents of underserved communities — Fare elimination plus targeted network redesign reduces out‑of‑pocket costs and (if projects succeed) shortens commutes and increases reliable access to jobs, education, and services.
- Foster care youth and other prioritized groups — The bill explicitly includes foster care youth in required demographic tracking, increasing the likelihood programs will consider targeted outreach and supportive transit access for young people aging out of care.
- Transit agencies and local planners that win grants — Agencies receive dedicated federal revenue to replace fares and to finance safety upgrades, staffing increases, and network redesign work that agencies often lack local funds to perform.
- Workers and labor organizations in transit systems — Grants fund hiring and training, which can create new operator and maintenance roles and give unions leverage to negotiate staffing and safety commitments tied to expanded service.
- Communities of color — The program ties awards and reporting to metrics about communities of color and underserved tracts, creating a mechanism to prioritize projects that close specific racial and geographic mobility gaps.
Who Bears the Cost
- Federal budget/taxpayers — The bill authorizes $25 billion across five fiscal years; that represents a real appropriation request the federal government must fund if grants are awarded at authorized levels.
- Local governments and transit agencies after the grant period — The five‑year grants do not guarantee long‑term funding; jurisdictions may absorb ongoing operational costs or scale back service once federal support ends.
- Transit agency administrative capacity — Agencies must produce detailed equity evaluations, overhaul enforcement practices, manage community engagement, and meet reporting requirements, imposing staff time and consulting costs that smaller agencies may struggle to cover.
- Local enforcement and court systems — Ending criminalization of fare evasion shifts enforcement dynamics and may reduce fine revenue or require reallocation of enforcement resources; municipalities that relied on fines for local budgets will face adjustment costs.
- Competing priorities within transportation budgets — Federal funds earmarked for fare elimination may displace other local or state capital projects if jurisdictions redirect matching or maintenance funds to sustain expanded service.
Key Issues
The Core Tension
The bill’s central dilemma is equity versus sustainability: eliminating fares expands access and reduces the criminalization of poverty, but it converts a predictable local revenue stream into a federal grant dependency. The program funds the transition, not the long‑term model—so it must either buy time for jurisdictions to develop alternative local financing and service capacity, or create a cycle of temporary federal subsidies that leave structural funding questions unresolved.
The bill provides a substantial, time‑limited federal backstop for fare elimination, but it does not solve the long‑term funding question. Grants run only five years; absent a plan for sustainable revenue or local commitment, jurisdictions risk service cuts or a reversal of fare‑free policies once federal dollars expire.
That dynamic will shape which applicants the Secretary favors: projects with clear local revenue strategies or formal intergovernmental commitments are likely stronger candidates.
The application and reporting requirements push toward rigorous equity measurement, but they also impose nontrivial data and administrative burdens—especially for small transit agencies and rural nonprofits. The bill leaves key implementation choices to the Secretary (selection criteria, how to balance rural and urban awards, specifics of required consultation), which creates uncertainty for applicants and could produce uneven outcomes across regions.
Finally, requiring applicants to end criminalization of fare evasion raises practical and legal questions: jurisdictions will need concrete enforcement alternatives, and local political resistance could slow implementation or force compromises that blunt intended equity gains.
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