Sponsors (2)
The bill improves student safety around school buses by funding sidewalks, crossings, and education and by enabling use of federal safety dollars for bus-route infrastructure, but it rebalances transportation funding toward these projects and may create local cost burdens and enforcement risks for some communities.
Students and parents/families will have safer walking and waiting conditions at school bus stops because funds can be used for sidewalks, crossings, and traffic-calming projects.
Local and state governments can unlock additional federal safety dollars by using HSIP funds for school-bus-route infrastructure, enabling more projects to be built or upgraded.
Schools and districts can run outreach and education campaigns to increase safe bus ridership and reduce dangerous behavior near stops, improving student safety and awareness.
Taxpayers and local governments may see other transportation priorities reduced because STBG/HSIP funds could be redirected toward school-bus projects, limiting funding for competing local needs.
Drivers, students, and racial/ethnic minority communities could face increased interactions with law enforcement from expanded enforcement and traffic-education efforts near stops, raising risks of disproportionate enforcement.
Local governments and taxpayers may incur ongoing maintenance or matching-cost obligations for new infrastructure, creating budget pressures if federal funding doesn't cover full lifecycle costs.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Allows existing Federal-aid highway and HSIP funds to be used for planning, building, and noninfrastructure activities to make school bus routes and stops safer.
Official title: Amend title 23, United States Code, to include school bus route safety in the safe routes to school program, and for other purposes.
Introduced May 12, 2026 by Catherine Marie Cortez Masto · Last progress May 12, 2026
Creates a new federal option to use existing Federal-aid highway and Highway Safety Improvement Program (HSIP) funds for safer school bus routes and stops. The law defines “school bus route,” adds school-bus-route projects as an explicit planning objective, allows Surface Transportation Block Grant and related funds to pay for sidewalks, crossings, traffic calming, waiting areas and related construction, and permits noninfrastructure activities like outreach, awareness, enforcement, and student bus-safety education. The change adds school-bus-route projects to metropolitan and statewide transportation planning goals and makes the related infrastructure eligible under HSIP, opening current federal highway safety and surface transportation funds to projects that improve student safety while waiting for and boarding school buses.