{"id":256266,"date":"2020-05-27T06:39:49","date_gmt":"2020-05-27T10:39:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=256266"},"modified":"2020-05-27T06:39:49","modified_gmt":"2020-05-27T10:39:49","slug":"going-the-distance-by-bus-through-a-pandemic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2020\/05\/27\/going-the-distance-by-bus-through-a-pandemic\/","title":{"rendered":"Going The Distance By Bus Through A Pandemic"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Despite the risk of the coronavirus in public places, people are still boarding public buses and trains because they have no other options to get to work, go shopping and fill prescriptions. (Pexels photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

LOS ANGELES \u2014 Mary Pierson boarded a nearly empty L.A. Metro bus at the corner of Atlantic Boulevard and Riggin Street in Monterey Park one recent afternoon.<\/p>\n

Pierson, 69, uses a wheelchair and relies on public transportation to get around. She takes the bus a few times a week from Long Beach to various parts of Los Angeles to run errands and shop for groceries. Today, she took the No. 68 to the bank.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m glad they\u2019re still running,\u201d said Pierson, who wears a mask, gloves and sunglasses on board and disinfects her wheelchair after every trip. \u201cI live alone and need to get out of the house.\u201d<\/p>\n

She\u2019s also often alone on the bus. Transit ridership has plummeted since mid-March<\/a>, when states began imposing stay-at-home orders. The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, known as L.A. Metro, said ridership has fallen 64% on buses \u2014 about 1.2 million people rode them each day before COVID-19 hit \u2014 and by 76% on rail.<\/p>\n

Despite the risk of the coronavirus in public places, people are still boarding public buses and trains because they have no other options to get to work, go shopping and fill prescriptions.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re still seeing over 400,000 people per day,\u201d said Brian Haas, communications manager for L.A. Metro. \u201cWhat that tells us is that we\u2019re a lifeline for people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Perhaps the most vulnerable are the bus drivers and train operators. The Transport Workers Union of America has lost 96 members to COVID-19, the vast majority in New York City, the union says. None of the fatalities have been in California.<\/p>\n

New methods of sanitation and decontamination, like ultraviolet lighting<\/a>, should be used, said John Samuelsen, the union\u2019s president. \u201cMasks are the very minimum of what can be done to increase everybody\u2019s safety,\u201d he said. \u201cWe need to be thinking about what post-pandemic public transport will look like.\u201d<\/p>\n

To date<\/a>, L.A. Metro has supplied front-line employees with more than 715,000 pairs of gloves, 385,000 masks and 40,000 bottles of personal hand sanitizer.<\/p>\n

Until recently, face coverings had been optional on public transit in L.A. County.<\/p>\n

But in early May, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti announced<\/a> that all passengers on all Los Angeles Department of Transportation buses would be required to wear face coverings to reduce the spread of the virus. The department is a municipal agency that operates within the city and is separate from L.A. Metro. L.A. Metro started requiring passengers to wear face coverings May 11.<\/p>\n

Because of the low ridership numbers, social distancing is usually not a problem on buses, said L.A. Metro bus driver Voris Lombard. \u201cWhen people get on the bus, they have plenty of room to sit.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kaiser Health News<\/a>\u00a0is a nonprofit news service covering health issues. It is an editorially independent program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, which is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

LOS ANGELES \u2014 Mary Pierson boarded a nearly empty L.A. Metro bus at the corner of Atlantic Boulevard and Riggin …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":256268,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,16,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-256266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-lifestyle","category-news","category-news-w","mauthors-heidi-de-marco","mauthors-kaiser-health-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=256266"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256266\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":256269,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256266\/revisions\/256269"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/256268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=256266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=256266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=256266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}