“If you live in one of Virginia’s picturesque rural counties, you may have seen a familiar, yet puzzling sight: a large, brightly branded public bus rolling down a country road or regional highway, carrying nothing but a driver and a volume of air,” notes J.D. Wong at Bacon’s Rebellion. Federal taxpayers pay for that empty bus. That’s very inefficient and bad for the environment, because buses average only 3-10 miles per gallon of gasoline.
Wong explains that
This phantom fleet is largely funded by the Federal Transit Administration’s Section 5311 program, a well-meaning but economically obsolete initiative that pumps millions of tax dollars into “Formula Grants for Rural Areas.” Administered in the Commonwealth by the Department of Rail and Public Transportation (DRPT), these subsidies are designed to provide mobility to rural residents. But from an economic perspective, we must ask the hard question: Is this a good use of money?
The answer, increasingly, is no. The Section 5311 program represents a classic government failure.
Public transit relies on density to be efficient. In urban centers like Arlington or Richmond, a bus can serve dozens of riders per hour, spreading the operating costs across many riders. In rural Virginia, where population density drops to fewer than 50 people per square mile, the economics of fixed-route transit collapse.
Under the current 5311 framework, taxpayers subsidize buses, not passengers. Whether a bus carries twenty people or zero, the fuel, maintenance, insurance, and driver costs remain the same. In many rural systems, the “cost per ride” can balloon to staggering amounts — sometimes upwards of $30 or $40 per trip — billed largely to the taxpayer, while the rider pays a nominal fare that covers a fraction of the expense.
We are effectively operating a government-owned taxi service using 45-foot buses…
The inefficiency extends beyond local shuttles to the state’s intercity bus program. Federal law (Section 5311(f)) mandates that states spend at least 15% of their rural transit grant on intercity bus transportation unless the Governor certifies that all needs are met. This “use it or lose it” provision incentivizes the state to launch routes regardless of actual market demand. Routes, predictably, become based on politics and vote seeking, not economics.
“Despite receiving enormous subsidies,” the route connecting Washington and Danville carried only 7,210 riders in the most recent fiscal year, while the route connecting Washington and Martinsville carried only 6,846 riders. That’s less than 20 people per day.
A bus with just a couple riders in it is basically a taxi. A big, empty taxi, that uses more gasoline than a typical, smaller taxi driven by a cab driver. Yet that’s what taxpayers are paying for.
