Distancing up to riders, T boss says
MBTA plans routine cleaning of ‘touch points’
The MBTA’s boss says ridership will remain low as Massachusetts enters Phase 2 of reopening amid the coronavirus pandemic, but the T will leave it to riders to maintain social distancing and will not engage in active enforcement.
“We don’t want to get into a situation where someone sits on a stickered seat, folks take enforcement into their own hands, that’s a situation we want to avoid,” said MBTA General Manager Steve Poftak.
Poftak said T’s bus drivers won’t count rider numbers as they board and depart, and subways won’t have staff walking between cars to monitor crowd levels.
Additional service on train and bus lines will be added during Phase 2 of Gov. Charlie Baker’s reopening plan slated to begin Monday. The T’s ferry service will also resume.
The T has already seen an increase in ridership from an approximate 140,000 riders to 170,000 riders per day, Poftak said, speaking on NECN’s “This Week in Business” Sunday morning.
The T is also spending $750,000 a week on additional cleaning of vehicles and stations, including cleaning and disinfecting vehicles on a “nightly” basis and wiping down “touch points” at major stations every four hours.
Poftak also talked about the budget impact of the coronavirus pandemic.
He said the T’s $831 million in federal stimulus funding has allowed the agency to look ahead to fiscal 2021 as lower ridership persists.
“We will have significantly lower ridership, and that ridership will come back in a pretty slow, measured way,” Poftak said.
Poftak also doubled down on the T’s decision to close downtown stations over safety concerns during last Sunday’s protests, citing concerns for security in stations and crowding issues.
“It’s not something we take lightly and it is something we monitor very carefully,” he said.