Distancing restrictions to ease on buses Monday
Union says drivers are confused, concerned
The chair of TransLink’s Mayors’ Council said he is confident the public will be safe when the transit authority removes seating restrictions and increases capacity on its buses next week, despite the fact that riders will have a hard time maintaining physical distance.
Starting Monday, boarding will once again take place at the front and all seats will become available, though customers will be asked to avoid standing, and bus operators will allow their vehicles to get to two-thirds capacity before designating them as full.
In March, TransLink instituted front-door boarding, suspended fare collection and limited seating on buses, cutting capacity to 30 per cent, to allow for physical distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic. Similar seating restrictions were not put in place on other modes, such as SkyTrain.
Mayors’ Council chair Jonathan Coté said TransLink has been in close contact with the provincial health office in developing its policies and procedures during the pandemic and TransLink feels comfortable the region is in a good place to begin lifting restrictions.
Asked why the transit system would not be subject to the same physical distancing requirements as other sectors, Coté said the province has taken more of an individualized approach.
“In each sector, you’re going to have opportunities and challenges, and I think we’ve been working very closely with the provincial government to say how do we set up a system that allows us viably to be able to provide public transit, but do it in a safe way that is consistent with the provincial guidelines,” Coté said.
However, the union that represents 3,800 transit operators at Coast Mountain Bus Co., said the easing of seating restrictions on buses came as a surprise and is causing confusion and concern among its members.
Unifor western regional director Gavin McGarrigle said they have many questions and they’re asking the provincial health officer and WorkSafeBC to weigh in.
“We want to make sure that if we’re going to go in this direction that our members and the passengers are safe,” McGarrigle said.
Because physical distancing will be difficult, transit users have been encouraged to wear non-medical face coverings while waiting for or riding in vehicles, avoid transit when they’re sick and travel at off-peak times, if possible.
“We can’t, in a public transit environment, maintain the two-metre spacing as more and more people board buses and trains,” TransLink CEO Kevin Desmond said at a Mayors’ Council meeting on Thursday.
Since the province entered the latest phase of its restart plan last week, riders have been slowly returning to transit. Desmond said TransLink will monitor ridership daily to ensure it can deal with any crowding situations that arise.
As of May 24, ridership on Metro Vancouver’s transit system had returned to about 20 per cent of pre-pandemic levels, and since the ridership low point a few weeks ago there has been a 30-per-cent increase. At the nadir, there were 240,000 boardings per day on the system, and that’s now up to 317,000 daily boardings.
Before the COVID-19 crisis, there were 1.5 million boardings per day.