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Program overview

Clean School Bus Program

program overview / Clean School Bus Program

Clean School Bus Program

Environmental Protection Agency

This program offers states, local governments, tribal governments, contractors, and nonprofit school transportation associations funding to replace existing school buses with zero-emission and low-emission models in the form of rebates and grants. The money can go toward zero-emission school buses and alternative fuels, with priority for rural or low-income communities. The data displayed here includes only rebates for 2022 and only grants for 2023. Rebates for 2023 were announced too close to publication to include.. Learn more at www.epa.gov.

Geographic Share

Where Is Funding Distributed?

Compare funding distribution by state

Total Funding

$5,740,689,572

Recent funding

  • Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act

Funding Type

Formula

Competitive

Equity measures

How equitably were funds distributed?

To explore how programs distribute funding compared with community characteristics, we developed several equity measures:

A concentration measure, which shows how much of a program’s funding is distributed to jurisdictions with the greatest share of a selected community characteristic. Scores range from −1 to 3.

Distribution measures

A variability measure, which demonstrates how evenly a program’s funding is distributed across the country on a per capita basis. We only display this score, which starts at 0, for state-level, formula-funded programs.

A disadvantage measure, which shows the share of funding a program allocates to counties that experience disproportionate environmental or socioeconomic burden.

A persistent poverty measure, which shows the share of funding a program allocates to counties with a poverty rate of 20 percent or higher for three decades.

Select an equity measure

Concentration measure

Data level

indicator Equity score
Population share who are people of color visualization of equity score

0.32

Poverty rate visualization of equity score

0.85

Median household income visualization of equity score

0.49

Population density visualization of equity score

0.54

Transportation costs visualization of equity score

0.25

Annual vehicle miles per household visualization of equity score

0.03

Transportation staff capacity visualization of equity score

-0.05

Population share who are children visualization of equity score

-0.26

Environmental staff capacity visualization of equity score

-0.31

Community comparison

How Is Funding Distributed by Community Characteristic?

For each program, we’ve analyzed how funding is distributed along different community characteristics. For counties, we show these distributions of funding by quintiles, and for states, we show these distributions by quartiles.

Population share who are people of color
County

Funding is on average similar for counties with a higher population share who are people of color than for counties with a lower population share who are people of color compared with the national average.

Average program funding per 1,000 residents

$0 $5,000 $10,000 $15,000 $20,000 $25,000 $30,000 $35,000 $40,000 0.0%-7.0% 7.0%-13.0% 13.0%-24.4% 24.4%-43.1% 43.1%+

Population share who are people of color by county

About

Update: This tool was updated on March 13, 2025 to include data from fiscal year 2023, additional federal infrastructure programs, and new funding distribution measures. The title was also changed to "Are Federal Infrastructure Funds Meeting Your Community’s Needs" to make it clear that the tool tracks funding by a variety of characteristics, including geography, race, income level, and indicators of local need. This tool was originally named "Is Federal Infrastructure Spending Advancing Racial and Economic Equity?”

For this tool, we analyzed 85 grant programs funded by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, 9 grant programs funded by the Inflation Reduction Act, 2 programs funded by annual appropriations to the Department of Transportation, and 14 housing programs that use annual HUD appropriations. The data presented here are limited to fiscal year 2022 and fiscal year 2023. We collected program data from federal departmental announcements and project fact sheets. Demographic and need indicator data are sourced from approximately two dozen publicly available sources, including the 2016–20 American Community Survey five-year estimates from the US Census Bureau and data produced by other federal agencies.

To learn more about how to use this tool, see our user guide. To review the complete list of data sources and methods used in this work, see our full report.

Project Credits

This data tool was funded by a grant from the Melville Charitable Trust as part of the Partnership for Equitable and Resilient Communities Initiative. We are grateful to them and to all our funders, who make it possible for Urban to advance its mission. The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders. Funders do not determine research findings or the insights and recommendations of our experts. More information on our funding principles is available here. Read our terms of service here.

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