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Stimu-bus: County gets funds for VanGO
Federal money will buy seven new buses for service
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
 Click here to enlarge this photo Staff photos by EMILY BARNES
VanGO buses pick up passengers in Waldorf on Tuesday. Seven new buses will be purchased with federal recovery dollars.
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ANNAPOLIS — Local transit systems in Southern Maryland will get a big boost from the federal stimulus package, state officials announced last week.
The region is one of the biggest beneficiaries of $5.1 million in federal recovery dollars, approved last week by the Board of Public Works, which will be used to purchase replacement buses for local transit operations.
Of the 49 buses that the state plans to buy, the three jurisdictions in Southern Maryland would get 14 new medium and small vehicles. Charles County will get seven of the 19 medium-sized buses that will be purchased at a cost of $3.4 million.
Calvert and St. Mary's counties each will get two of the mid-sized Rohrer vehicles. Three of the smaller coach and equipment buses will also go to those counties — two to St. Mary's and one to Calvert.
The seven mid-sized buses for Charles County, which cost $191,000 apiece, will enable a more rapid replacement of its aging VanGO fleet.
"The nature of the VanGO operation is very high mileage and the vehicles rack up incredible mileages, so that's going to open up the door for us to have a little more aggressive replacement schedule," said Jeff Barnett, the county's transportation chief.
The county was slated to get six replacement buses in fiscal 2010, but the strained state budget situation put the planned purchases in question.
"We were still playing catch-up with our replacements," Barnett said. "This pretty much gets the fleet back on track."
All told, Maryland expects to receive about $610 million in federal stimulus aid for transportation projects, which is projected to support as many as 17,000 existing or new jobs.
