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supply sector. Perhaps the most fa- mous of these in the past two decades was the $60 million FTA-funded Ad- vanced Technology Transit Bus Proj- ect in the 1990s. After the program ended in the mid-1990s, North Ameri- can Bus Industries Inc. was the only manufacturer to step forward with an advanced composite structure, which was considered key to the major ATTB project objective of significantly lower- ing bus weight. Since then, other bus builders, including New Flyer and Proterra, have incorporated composite structures in their vehicles. Bus weights remain a major problem on U.S. streets and roads; curb weights have climbed in some cases well past 30,000 pounds due in no small part to equipment-related mandates, such as lifts or ramps for wheelchair passengers, alternative-fuel systems and the growing variety of advanced electronic compo- nents being specified by transit agencies. Bus manufacturing executives and FTA officials initially believed that ad- vanced composite technology could take as many as 7,000 pounds out of the curb weight of a transit bus. How- ever, those early hopes were never real- ized, and bus weights, for the most part remain a large issue, so much so that the recent MAP-21 legislation includes a permanent exemption for transit bus- The Fuel Cell Bus Program, in which the FTA provides grants to promote hydrogen fuel-cell buses, is one of the ways the Obama Administration has tried to help grow sustainability pro- grams within the public transportaton industry. es on axle loading weights for vehicles using the federally-assisted Interstate Highway System. Other past projects have also met with mixed results. In the 1970s and early 1980s, the Transbus and the Stan- dard Light Rail Vehicle programs were met with little market response. The Transbus program led to the Advanced Design Bus and the White Book of bus specifications, however, the latter is the predecessor to the Standard Develop- ment Bus Guidelines, another federal- ly-funded effort. DO OTHER NATIONS DO BETTER? In August 2010, the British news magazine, The Economist, noticed a renewed interest in more vigorous in- dustrial policies throughout the world, particularly in developed countries. Examples included legislation passed not only in the U.S. with the Recovery Act mentioned above, but also in Brit- ain, France, Germany, Japan and South Korea. These policies have been driven by very similar objectives in all of these nations: pressure to use government intervention to stimulate economic growth and job creation and the need for governments to respond to per- ceived threats from policies pursued in emerging nations, particularly in Chi- na. Despite severe budget challenges in many of these countries, these policies continue to this day, largely because experts believe some government inter- vention is still needed. In March 2012, a high-level meeting of policy analysts, industry executives and other stake- holders was convened at Duke University to build a "BRT business constituency" in the U.S. Indeed, at press time the British gov- ernment appeared to double down on its efforts in this regard. Rather than taking steps to cut government and reduce remaining industrial strategies, this Conservative-led government an- nounced steps toward establishing a more cohesive, interventionist indus- trial strategy. Although budgets for new programs were not yet announced, the government did announce proposals to encourage advanced manufacturing and "knowledge-intensive services." Despite its even more severe fiscal FACT BOOK 2013 mETRO mAGAZINE > 7