The war has a bus fare.
Your district is paying it.
Families feel diesel at their own pump. The school bus fills up too. Bus Fare shows what higher diesel prices are costing every Michigan school district at this week's price, and how big a bite that takes out of a budget that was already set.
Statewide estimates at launch on October 21, 2026, at that week's U.S. Energy Information Administration price. The figures on the live site update every week.
Don't show the mass.
Show the one.
Faced with one giant number, people feel nothing. The psychologist Paul Slovic calls it psychic numbing. A statewide total is that kind of number.
Your own school district is not. So Bus Fare goes to the community that pays the bill and shows it that bill: on the web, on social media and on a billboard on the road into town. In Utica, that number is $618,372.
Corruption sends a bill.
We add it up.
Bus Fare grows out of WalletShock, our project to show citizens how corruption hits their wallets. A few get the windfall, and everyone pays the bill. It works best when nobody adds up the tab.
WalletShock makes the case. Bus Fare makes it personal. It takes one act at a time and runs a campaign on it, district by district, in the communities that are paying for it.
The first act is the war with Iran. Midwest diesel rose from about $4 a gallon in 2023–24 to $6.35 the week Bus Fare launched. Michigan's school districts buy that diesel to get kids to class, out of budgets the state had already set.
The fare went up. The budget didn't.
We started in Michigan because that's where the trap is tightest.
The budget was set in July.
Michigan's budget law fixed this year's school funding at $10,300 per student before diesel kept climbing.
Busing money doesn't move with fuel.
The state's transportation allocation doesn't adjust when the price at the pump goes up.
Districts can't raise the difference.
Most districts can't vote in higher local operating taxes on their own. Every extra dollar for diesel comes out of something else.
Where the numbers come from.
Each district's estimate starts from the fuel line in its own 2023–24 spending report to the state, the latest full year on record, and follows the weekly Midwest diesel price from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
The site updates when each week's price comes out, and every figure comes with its source. If you quote a figure, take it from the site and name its price week.
Look it up. Send it on. Bring it up.
Billboards, social graphics, a partner kit and press work all point people to one place: their own district's page. Then we ask them to pass it to a parent in the next district over, and to raise it at pickup, at the school board and with anyone asking for their vote.
The story behind Bus Fare.
Follow the Diesel Bill All the Way to Washington
Why we campaign hyper-locally: one giant number makes people numb, but one district's bill makes them act. What the Utica billboard set off, and why Michigan and Texas.
Read on SubstackThe Iran War is Costing Your Community
Kristofer Harrison on why the team built Bus Fare, why it started in Michigan, and why Texas is next.
Read on SubstackWhat is your district paying?
Find your Michigan school district's estimated extra cost this year, what it comes to per student and how much of the budget it takes. Texas is next.
Partners are welcome to use Bus Fare's graphics and copy with credit to Bus Fare, a project of the Dekleptocracy Alliance. Write to us for the partner kit.