Grande West Transportation Group Inc., a Canadian bus manufacturer of heavy-duty, mid-sized transit buses for sale in Canada and the United States, announced it has secured a manufacturing agreement to produce Vicinity buses in Atlanta, Georgia, that meets Federal Transit Administration Buy America requirements.
Alliance Bus Group (ABG), Grande West's exclusive U.S. distributor, will produce Buy America-compliant Vicinity buses for sale to U.S. transit authorities. The ability to leverage ABG existing facilities, staff and knowledge of bus technology provides Grande West with a solid foundation upon which it can quickly ramp to production.
Grande West is the 'Transit Vehicle Manufacturer' of record with the FTA and responsible for all the necessary compliance with the federal government and Buy America requirements.
ABG will invest in excess of $1 million to transform its existing 70,000-square-foot manufacturing and service facility with tooling and test equipment necessary for production. Improvements will also include a customer inspection and delivery acceptance area. The project is slated for completion by third quarter 2017 at which time production will commence.
ABG CEO Doug Dunn stated, "ABG has been busy bidding RFPs that require Buy America buses. We are excited and confident that we will have additional FTA transit orders in 2017 and want to begin this process in order to start delivering Vicinity buses in 2017."
Grande West CEO William Trainer commented, "Forming this alliance is yet another major milestone as we will be producing Buy America Vicinity with our trusted partner ABG. This strengthens our working relationship and will provide additional Vicinity production options as we can also leverage ABG assembled buses for private operators or Canadian transit authorities."
