- Details
- Category: Industry News
Heads up, motorcoach operators: The deadline is rapidly approaching to apply for the Coronavirus Economic Relief for Transportation Services (CERTS) Program. The grant program was designed to provide relief to bus and motorcoach operators who lost 25 percent or more of revenue during COVID to cover payroll costs, but also acquisition of services; equipment, including PPE and COVID protection measures; continued operations and maintenance of existing equipment and facilities; rent; leases; insurance; and interest on regular debt service.
Full program guidelines and FAQs can be found here.
Application Deadline: The CERTS portal will be open for applications through July 19, 2021. To be considered for a CERTS grant, an application must be completed, electronically signed, and submitted through the portal by 11:59 p.m. ET on July 19. After the deadline, the portal will not accept new applications, and users will not be able to finish draft applications in the portal.
Accessing the CERTS Portal: To gain access to the CERTS portal and submit an application, a company representative must first register with a username and password through the ID.me identity service. Interested companies may register to obtain an ID.me username and password and access the CERTS portal here.
The IRS has also released a bulletin that addresses any questions that operators have about the grants and taxation, which can be found here.
Matt Daus of Windels Marx gives a rundown of the program here.
[07.13.21]
- Details
- Category: Industry News
Vicinity Motor Corp. (formerly Grande West Transportation Group), a leading supplier of electric, CNG, gas, and clean diesel vehicles based in Canada, held a groundbreaking ceremony July 9 to mark the start of construction on the company’s new “Buy America compliant” vehicle assembly facility in Ferndale, Washington. VMC is a supplier of ABC Companies’ low-floor transit buses, including the upcoming Vicinity Lighting batter-electric bus.
The new facility, which is expected to open in 2022, will be VMC’s first US assembly plant for the company’s growing line of electric, CNG, gas, and clean diesel vehicles. Operations at the facility will include Buy America compliant assembly, pre-delivery inspections, research and development, as well as general technical work and servicing.
VMC CEO William Trainer led the groundbreaking event, which included ABC Companies President Roman Cornell and Washington State Governor Jay Inslee.
“Support from the State of Washington and the local community has been instrumental to this launch, and we are honored to be celebrating the occasion with the Governor of Washington, Jay Inslee. With their support, we are privileged to expand our workforce in the United States by adding an expected 30 new jobs to start with, and the ability to increase personnel as demand grows,” said Trainer.
“As Vicinity’s US distributor and close partner, we are excited to attend the ceremony, and to offer the exceptional Vicinity product line to our customers throughout the United States,” said Cornell. “Infrastructure, transportation, and clean energy have never been more important, and the vehicles rolling off this production line and into the fleets of ABC Companies’ valued customers will play a key role in shaping the future of public transit.”
Visit vicinitymotorcorp.com for more information about VMC. Visit abc-companies.com for information about ABC.
[07.13.21]
- Details
- Category: Industry News
A coalition of 24 trade organizations representing a large and diverse swath of the US economy is renewing urgent calls to lift restrictions on international visitation to the United States and has developed a blueprint for how to do it safely. Among the associations are the Global Business Travel Association, the International Air Transport Association, and the US Travel Association.
Called “A Framework to Safely Lift Entry Restrictions and Restart International Travel,” the document identifies policy principles for welcoming international visitors back to the US while keeping health and safety as the top priority.
“The travel industry agrees that being guided by the science is absolutely the correct approach, and the science has been telling us for some time that it’s possible to begin to safely reopen international travel,” said US Travel Association President & CEO Roger Dow. “Our document continues to prioritize safety while providing a roadmap for solving for the billions of dollars in economic damage resulting from the continued restrictions on crossing our borders, in particular from allied countries with similar vaccination rates. We have the knowledge and the tools we need to restart international travel safely, and it is past time that we use them.”
“US airlines have been—and continue to be—strong advocates for a risk-based, data-driven approach to safely resuming international travel as laid out in the blueprint,” said Airlines for America President & CEO Nicholas Calio. “We have leaned into science throughout this crisis, and research has consistently determined the risk of transmission onboard aircraft is very low. In fact, the Harvard Aviation Public Health Initiative concluded that being on an airplane is as safe if not safer than routine activities such as eating in a restaurant or going to the grocery store. The science is clear—it is time, if not past the time, for the US government to take action and reopen travel between the US and low-risk countries.”
U.S. Travel Association President & CEO Roger Dow
Some of the guidelines in the policy framework:
- Reserve entry restrictions for only the highest-risk countries.
- Replace all other blanket travel restrictions with a framework of entry protocols based on a country-by-country and individual traveler risk assessment.
- Ensure the framework is easy to understand, communicate, and implement.
As immediate steps toward reopening, the blueprint urges the federal government to:
- Quickly lift entry restrictions and reopen travel between the US and the UK, given the two countries’ similar vaccination records. Research from the Mayo Clinic shows the risk of a person infected with COVID boarding a flight from the UK to the US is 1 out of 10,000. The same research shows that the risk of an infected passenger transmitting the virus to another passenger flying from the UK to the US is even lower, at 1 out of 1 million passengers.
- Allow expedited entry into the US for fully vaccinated individuals from non-high-risk countries.
Dow stressed that policies should remain agile to allow for shifts as circumstances warrant. Variants of concern bear watching, he said—but he also reminded that the Delta variant is already present in the US, and that it is effectively managed by available vaccines and resulting in very low rates of hospitalization.
“Restrictions on international travel are no longer what is protecting us from outbreaks of the virus,” Dow said. “In that vein, the travel industry continues to urge everyone who is eligible to receive a vaccine—they have been effective beyond expectation, and they are what is going to allow our lives to go fully back to normal and put this pandemic in the rearview mirror for good.”
Click here to read the full policy blueprint.
[07.13.21]