Hundreds of thousands of straphangers are expected to return to the subway Monday as New York City’s coronavirus restrictions begin to loosen — and while the MTA is working to make sure trains as safe as it can, many riders still fear a mass spread of the disease on the system.
“I’m worried about other people on the train without a mask. You don’t know who is sick,” said Ximena Bernal, 36, an interpreter for non-English speaking patients at NYU-Langone Hospital, which was on the front line of the pandemic.
She rides the subway five days a week.
“The hospital takes so many precautions,” she said. “The subway? I don’t know.”
Trends in other cities across the globe combined with steps taken by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority ought to give passengers a cautious sense of safety as subway service resumes near-normal operations.
Riders will be required to wear masks — if you don’t have one, you can get one at the turnstile. MTA officials said transit workers will badger riders who don’t wear masks, and the agency has asked the NYPD to enforce the requirement without arrests or summonses.
Widespread mask use is the common thread as subway ridership rebounded in other cities around the world without causing a spike in infections.
Ridership on Berlin’s subway, the U-Bahn, has already reached 50% of its pre-pandemic levels after falling by 75% in March. The city has recorded 6,800 COVID-19 infections, a fraction of the 205,000 seen in New York, but hasn’t seen a spike.
“Mask compliance is very high, maybe 90%,” said Alon Levy, a transit researcher who lives in Berlin. “Crowding is probably less than normal in peak periods, but not far less.”
In Seoul, a city that contained the outbreak by mid-March — as New York was becoming its epicenter — subway ridership never dipped more than 33%, and has since rebounded to more 80% of what it was last year. In Seoul, Face masks are mandatory at rush hours.
It’s a similar story in Taipei, Taiwan — a city with strong culture of mask usage and pandemic precautions. Ridership on the Taipei subway there never fell more than 50% during the pandemic, and is currently about 80% below normal.
“One of the most common features in every city in every transit area is wearing masks,” MTA chairman Pat Foye said at a news conference Friday. “The single most important thing is all our employees and all of our customers wear masks every moment they’re on public transit.”
New York has been hard-hit by the pandemic — and the subways suffered along with the rest of the city.
Subway ridership plunged by more than 90% after the pandemic struck in mid-March, and service was cut 25% as coronavirus swept through the MTA’s workforce, killing at least 131 of its employees as of last week.
Sam Schwartz, a transportation consultant who does business with the MTA, expects ridership on New York’s subway to reach 50% of pre-pandemic levels — or about 2.8 million trips per day — by year’s end.
If ridership hits 50% of pre-pandemic levels, straphangers will have some space on cars — not quite the six feet recommended by the Centers for Disease Control, but enough that people won’t be breathing down each other’s necks.
“What’s really needed is for people to understand the probability of transmission,” said Schwartz. “If my mask is 70% effective and your mask is 70% effective, you’re likely 99% covered.”
Schwartz pointed to the aftermath of 9/11, when the subways were regularly closed amid terrorist threats, as an example that riders can assess safety risks themselves. “You were scared, but you made decisions.”
Still, there is good reason for riders to be fearful, said Norman Pace, one of the country’s leading microbiologists.
“Covid, as with other respiratory viruses, probably is mainly transmitted by droplet transfer from an infected individual, so riding in crowded subways is a problem,” said Pace. “The best thing is for infected folks to use a mask, but you don’t know who is who.”
Masks may not be the only solution. The MTA is testing technology to eradicate COVID-19 from air droplets in subway car ventilation systems. If successful, the technology, called photo-hydro ionization, can be quickly rolled out into the agency’s entire fleet of 6,400 cars.
The MTA also hopes to stop the spread of COVID-19 by regularly cleaning subway trains and stations. Passengers have noticed that trains are cleaner — but surface transmission is “not thought to be the main way the virus spreads,” the CDC says.
Whether or not riders feel safe, many have no other choice but to use the subway to commute.
“I have to go to work. Cabs are too expensive, walking is not an option,” said Halima Halina, 46, who commutes each day from lower Manhattan to Coney Island Hospital via the subway. “I just hope people don’t forget what is happening with the pandemic.”
Yet many other riders view the subway like Schwartz does. They assess risk, and make a choice based on the information they have at hand.
“If the subway is too crowded I’m not going to get on,” said Lawrence Scott, 73, who lives in Chelsea and uses the subway three or four days a week. “But I feel totally safe on the subway, sometimes safer than in other places in the city.”
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