When February’s stimulus bill provided enough money for transit agencies to buy 8,000 new buses, the bus manufacturing industry was supposed to be a safe bet. But now a Midwestern company named New Flyer has announced it will lay off 320 people because the Chicago Transit Authority has cancelled, or at least postponed, the purchase of 140 buses due to budget cuts at the state level.
New Flyer admits it has “a large backlog of bus orders, including some from California, Milwaukee, Philadelphia and Rochester, that would use stimulus money. But because its buses are engineered to order for each customer, the company said in a statement, it cannot easily switch its production schedule to fill the gaps left by the delayed order.” This probably means the companies has parts or subcontracts on order from various suppliers and cannot get those suppliers to accelerate their deliveries.
