Assistance program
Public Transportation Emergency Relief Program
$3.2 Billion committed in FY2018–FY2026
- Agency
- Federal Transit Administration, Transportation, Department of
- Assistance
- Project Grants (Discretionary);Project Grants (Special)
- CFDA number
- 20.527
- What it does
- The Emergency Relief Program is intended to provide operating assistance and capital funding to aid recipients and sub-recipients in restoring public transportation service, and in repairing and reconstructing public transportation assets to a state of good repair, as expeditiously as possible following an emergency or major disaster.
- Who benefits
- Beneficiaries of funding include public transportation operators and the general public in areas for which an emergency or major disaster has been declared as defined under section 5324.
- Who applies
- An entity that operates public transportation service in an area impacted by an emergency or major disaster, as defined by a gubernatorial or presidential declaration of such an emergency or disaster, and that receives federal transit funds directly from FTA.
- Authorized by
- 49 U.S.C. § 5324
- 49 U.S.C. § 5324
- 49 U.S.C. § 5324
Committed by fiscal year
* FY2026 is year-to-date — the fiscal year is still in progress, so its total is still filling in. The striped band and dashed line mark that provisional stretch.
Top recipients
By dollars committed.
How to read these numbers
- Committed through this program
Money committed under this assistance listing (its CFDA program), counted in the year each action happened.
- How it's paid
Most programs pay out one way — a grant, or a direct payment to individuals; the flow bar only appears when a program genuinely mixes types.
- Some recipients aren't itemized
For entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, the government reports one aggregate instead of naming tens of millions of people, so the recipient roster isn't part of the public record.
- Awards, counted once
An award count is the number of distinct awards with at least one action that year — each counted once, however many times it was amended.
- The colored bars
Every bar on this page splits by how the money moves:
Direct payments