Paying Less for Public Transit Buses

Technological change and heightened global market competition have revolutionized the market for private vehicles, and the real quality-adjusted price of a new vehicle fell by 40 percent between 1995 and 2025. However, when it comes to buses—the most heavily used transit mode in the US, which accounted for approximately 3.8 billion unlinked passenger trips in 2024—prices have not followed the same trend.