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12:29 PM EST on November 24, 2025
A MBTA 109 bus drives up Broadway in Everett at dusk on Tuesday, Nov. 17, 2024.
Late last week, the Trump administration pledged $106 million in grants to five regional transit authorities (RTA) and the MBTA to help finance new buses and bus facilities across Massachusetts.
The funding was part of a national $2 billion round of funding for bus purchases under the Federal Transit Administration's annual bus and bus facilities capital investment program.
This year's round of grants under that program was considerably larger than usual, thanks to an additional $1.6 billion set-aside for low-emission and zero-emission buses in the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (sometimes referred to as the "Bipartisan Infrastructure Law").
The biggest grant for Massachusetts will be a $78.6 million pledge to the MBTA "to buy new hybrid buses to replace older buses that have reached their useful life."
That funding will support the current MBTA capital investment plan, which anticipates about $300 million in spending for new buses over the next 5 years.
The T's planned bus purchases include up to 460 new battery electric buses and up to 160 "enhanced electric hybrid" buses that will replace 20 year-old diesel buses.
"Enhanced electric" hybrid buses have large onboard batteries that allow them to turn off the diesel engine and run on battery power for short distances.
According to the FTA's grant announcements included the following descriptions for the other funds:
In the last round of low-emission bus grants, made during the Biden administration, dozens of grants went to finance new battery-electric buses and charging facilities.
In this year's round of funding, there is no mention of purely electric buses in the FTA's grant announcements.
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Mayor Wu's press office avoided several inquiries from StreetsblogMASS to discuss the worsening delays in MBTA bus service over the course of her first term.
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