Assistance program
Coronavirus Economic Relief for Transportation Services Act
$1.9 Billion committed in FY2021–FY2026
- Agency
- Departmental Offices, Treasury, Department of the
- Assistance
- Not Applicable
- CFDA number
- 21.028
- What it does
- Division N, Title IV, Section 421 of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021 (the “Actâ€), Pub. L. No. 116-260 (December 27, 2020) authorized the $2 billion Coronavirus Economic Relief for Transportation Services (CERTS) program to provide grants to eligible motorcoach companies, school bus companies, passenger vessel companies, and pilotage companies that have experienced annual revenue losses of 25 percent or more as result of COVID-19 directly or indirectly. The priority use of grant funds was required to be for payroll costs, though grants may be used for operating expenses and the repayment of debt accrued to maintain payroll.
- Who benefits
- Not Applicable
- Who applies
- Pursuant to subsections 421(a) and (c) of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021, eligible providers of transportation services under the CERTS program were required to: (1) be a private sector company, including a corporation, limited liability company, partnership, or sole proprietorship; (2) be established or organized in the United States or pursuant to Federal law; (3) have significant operations and a majority of employees based in the United States; and (4) be one of the four following types of transportation service providers (motorcoach transportation service providers, school bus transportation service providers, passenger vessel transportation service providers, or pilotage vessel transportation service providers) that as of March 1, 2020, either (a) have had 500 or fewer than 500 full-time, part-time, or temporary employees and not been a subsidiary, parent, or affiliate of any other entity with a combined total workforce of more than 500 full-time, part-time, or temporary employees; or (b) have had more than 500 full-time, part-time, or temporary employees and have not received assistance under the Passenger air carriers Loan Program, loans and loan guarantees for cargo air carriers, or National Security Loan Program (loans and loan guarantees for businesses critical to maintaining national security) under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act), Pub. L. No. 116-136. Providers of transportation services were also subject to other eligibility criteria as described in subsection 421(c)(2)(B) of the of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021.
- Authorized by
- Public Law 116-260
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