White House Roundtable on Clean Bus Manufacturing
On Wednesday, February 7th, the White House and the Federal Transit Administration (FTA), in coordination with the American Public Transportation Association (APTA), convened a roundtable discussion focused on ensuring adequate U.S. manufacturing capacity to build clean transit buses at the scale and pace needed to meet market demand and achieve national climate and equity goals.
President Biden’s Investing in America agenda is delivering historic funding to advance clean transit, which is crucial in reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the largest emitting sector, transportation. This historic funding also helps ensure that all communities are able to access good-paying jobs, schools, and health care. The President’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law invests more than $11 billion over five years to support purchasing cleaner, American-made transit buses, training the transit workforce, and upgrading fueling and maintenance infrastructure. To date, the Biden-Harris Administration has funded over 2,900 low- and zero- emission transit buses – enough to more than double the number of zero-emission transit buses on our roadways.
Today, to further build on these goals, FTA released its FY24 Bus Grants Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO), which makes available more than $1.5 billion in funding through President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. These funds are part of FTA’s “Bus and Bus Facilities” and “Low and No Emission Bus” competitive grant programs., which include substantial support for transit agencies to procure and deploy low- or no-emission, American-made buses. During the roundtable, FTA Administrator Nuria Fernandez emphasized changes in the NOFO to support these American manufacturers of clean buses, while driving down costs.
In parallel, APTA’s Bus Manufacturing Task Force released new recommendations to bolster competitiveness and stability in the U.S. bus manufacturing sector to help meet market demand, climate goals, and equity objectives for zero-emission buses.
Readout of White House Roundtable on Clean Bus Manufacturing | The White House