Detroit Made Free Bus Rides For All Students Permanent And Student Ridership Doubled In Two Months
Detroit Mayor Mary Sheffield announced on August 14, 2026, that the city's Ride to Rise program, which provides free rides on the Detroit Department of Transportation bus network to all K-12 students in the city, will become permanent and has received a $1 million allocation from the state budget to support it going forward. The program launched in April 2026 as a six-month pilot allowing any Detroit student aged 5 to 18 to board any DDOT bus at any time, seven days a week, by showing a school-issued ID with no fare, no pass, and no paperwork required. It covers students at public, private, and charter schools. In the first two months of the program at the end of the 2025-26 school year, student ridership doubled. Pershing High School senior Mac Sconi, who had raised transportation concerns directly with Sheffield during a campus visit earlier in the year, said the change was way less stressful for anyone who had to get to school on time. A student named Katelynn Tyner, who regularly rides DDOT, said she would love not having to pay and not having to go to the office every 30 days asking for a bus pass. Sheffield said the program's goals are to reduce chronic absenteeism and connect students to opportunity, meaning the bus is available not just to get to school but to after-school programs, tutoring, recreation centers, libraries, and jobs across the city.
Making the program permanent came with several additions to address concerns raised by families over the summer. The city is training 50 transit ambassadors, DDOT employees who will ride buses during peak hours before and after school to provide a welcoming, visible, and supportive presence for students navigating their commutes. Sheffield said she had heard from families that having trusted adults on board could provide an additional level of support, and that the city had worked with the Detroit Police Department's transit unit and neighborhood police officers to implement the ambassador program across key routes. The city is also piloting a rideshare program for a handful of high schools with the highest rates of chronic absenteeism, picking up and dropping off approximately 150 students across four schools who face unique transportation barriers. The Detroit Health Department is simultaneously offering vision and hearing screenings, vaccines, and other health support, with city officials noting that kids learn better when they're healthy. The full program, from free transit to health screenings to rideshare support, is framed under a citywide initiative called Day One Ready, a call to families to have students prepared when Detroit Public Schools Community District's 70,000 students returned to class on August 24.
