New Stimulus Orders Stabilize Bus Industry

MATT APUZZO

WASHINGTON (AP) — Washington is paying hundreds of millions of dollars under President Barack Obama's economic stimulus plan to build new, cleaner-burning buses, but that won't necessarily result in a burst of job openings soon at major manufacturers or suppliers.

The bus money, like many other programs in the $787 billion stimulus plan, is having the less glamorous and harder-to-quantify effect of keeping workers employed, providing a slight buffer from the recession to some in the auto industry.

At the White House, where saving jobs always was as much a priority as creating jobs, the bus industry is a success story. But it also shows how hard it is to account for that success, especially in an industry that keeps shedding jobs despite the stimulus.

"The stimulus has been a plus, but it's just, how do you do the math?" said Patrick Scully, chief commercial officer at Daimler Buses North America Inc., which operates plants in New York and North Carolina. "You could say, without it things would be worse."

The dollar signs in the stimulus law seem to foreshadow a bull market for companies that build buses, engines, transmissions and axles. Connecticut has budgeted $71 million to buy hybrid buses. New Jersey will spend $35 million to rehabilitate its fleet. Rural Oklahoma counties and Cape Cod, Massachusetts, vacation spots have bus projects in the works.