Assistance program
Passenger Ferry Grant Program, Electric or Low-Emitting Ferry Pilot Program, and Ferry Service for Rural Communities Program
$421.2 Million committed in FY2023–FY2026
- Agency
- Federal Transit Administration, Transportation, Department of
- Assistance
- Not Applicable
- CFDA number
- 20.532
- What it does
- The Passenger Ferry Grant Program provides funding for passenger ferries through a competitive process for capital projects that support passenger ferry systems in urbanized areas, such as ferry vessels, terminals, and related infrastructure. The Electric or Low-Emitting Ferry Pilot Program makes federal funds available to projects that supports the purchase of electric or low-emitting ferry vessels. The Ferry Service for Rural Communities Program makes federal funds available to states to ensure basic essential ferry service is provided to rural areas.
- Who benefits
- Not Applicable
- Who applies
- For the Passenger Ferry Program, eligible applicants are designated recipients or direct recipients of FTA’s Urbanized Area Formula Grants, as well as public entities engaged in providing public transportation passenger ferry service in urban areas that are eligible to be direct recipients. For the Electric or Low-Emitting Ferry Pilot Program are Designated/Direct Recipients of Section 5307 funding, including Designated/Direct Recipients of Section 5311 funding, including States, Territories and Tribal Governments. For the Ferry Service for Rural Communities, eligible recipients are States and territories.
- Authorized by
- The Passenger Ferry Grant Program makes federal funds available to designated recipients or eligible direct recipients of Urbanized Area Formula funds to support capital projects to improve existing passenger ferry service, establish new ferry service, and repair and modernize fe…
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