American busmaker Gillig and its workers, a stimulus success story

Cross-posted from the DOT Blog.

The other day, I heard a great success story from a man who thanked me for the work DOT’s Recovery Act grants had stimulated. He had in mind, specifically, our Federal Transit Administration grants that have allowed local and regional transit districts to upgrade and expand their fleets in times of strapped budgets.

Because of the Obama Administration’s stimulus, he said, the Gillig Corporation, a 100% American bus manufacturer in California, had not only been able to retain its workforce in threatening times, but had added workers and was even working a shift on Saturdays.

The first of 14 new Gillig-made buses for the Whatcom Transportation Authority (WA)

Now, I’ve heard a lot of anecdotes like this in the past 14 months. Recovery Act grants have allowed transit agencies to purchase over 12,000 new buses, rail cars, and paratransit vans. In Tennessee, for example, a grant to the Memphis Area Transit Authority allowed them to order 26 new vehicles from Gillig.

So we decided to follow up on this story by calling Gillig and chatting with their President, Denny Howard. Here’s what he had to say:

"I’ve been with Gillig for 32 years, so I’ve been watching the transit industry for decades. I meet with managers from transit agencies every day, and I have never seen the local funding in such desperate straits as today.

"A typical year industry-wide, agencies buy about 5,000 buses a year. With the stimulus, it’s up to 7,000 for last year, this year, and next year. But, if the stimulus hadn’t come through, the market would have dropped 40% to 3,000 buses a year for last year, this year, and at least through next year.