Deciphering the new ways to use public transportation
Riders gradually returning — but they face changes meant to slow coronavirus
Signs on the walls of BART stations remind passengers to keep their distance and wash their hands. Rows of seats on buses and ferries are taped off to keep riders apart. Bus drivers occasionally skip stops if their coaches get too full. And riders are wearing masks — or, at least they’re supposed to.
With the Bay Area’s commute ramping back up in the face of a still-raging global pandemic, passengers are returning to public transportation systems that have remade themselves for the coronavirus age, with a slate of changes meant to reduce the risk of spreading the deadly virus as well as win back the confidence of riders who recoil at the memory of crowding onto buses and trains the way they did several months ago.
“We’re doing what we can to make people feel comfortable riding transit,” said Thomas Hall, a spokesman for the Water Emergency Transportation Authority, which operates San Francisco Bay Ferry.
Over the past several weeks, transit agencies throughout the Bay Area say they’ve seen a slow but steady return of riders, who rejoin the thousands of essential workers and passengers who stayed on public transporta
tion through the shelter in place order.
Those numbers will likely swell as more businesses reopen, although if the reemergence of the Bay Area’s traffic is any indication, people have been quicker to return to their cars. Still, transit agencies including BART, Caltrain, VTA and Muni have started restoring some of the deep service cuts they made after ridership cratered in mid-March.
So, how comfortable should people feel riding the ferry, bus or train?
“The downside of public transportation is that it’s bringing people together in a closed environment and we know that is a risk,” said John Swartzberg, clinical professor emeritus of infectious diseases and vaccinology at UC Berkeley.
Still, figuring out how to live with — and avoid getting — the coronavirus has meant weighing the relative risks of everything from a trip to the beach to a drink at a favorite bar.
It comes down in large part to two factors, according to Swartzberg: How crowded is it and how many
people are wearing masks?
If people can keep 6 feet of space between them and their fellow passengers and everyone is wearing a mask, Swartzberg said a bus ride or BART trip probably ranks as a mediumrisk activity. That puts it on par with getting a manicure or dining at a restaurant, in his estimation.
The odds of getting infected are greater if riders’ faces are exposed or if crowding forces people closer together. Those pre-pandemic rush hour BART trains where riders crammed cheek to jowl would be a high-risk nightmare these days, Swartzberg said.
Risk also depends on each person’s health and susceptibility to COVID-19.
“I’m not going to be on BART for a long time,” said Swartzberg, who is in his 70s,
The good news is that masks are mandatory for all public transit riders and the region’s buses and trains are nowhere near as crowded as they were before the coronavirus hit.
BART, which had fewer than 25,000 weekday passengers in mid-April, is now regularly topping 40,000 per weekday. But that still represents only a little more than one-tenth of prepandemic
levels, which officials say leaves plenty of room for social distancing.
The agency estimates passengers can keep 6 feet apart if there are no more than 30 people in each car. Spokeswoman Alicia Trost said BART’s busiest trains, at rush hour on the San Francisco-Pittsburg/Bay Point line, are now carrying fewer passengers than the average. The system announced Monday that it will add extra service during those hours to head off crowding. Trost said passenger loads at other times average in the single digits per car.
San Francisco Bay Ferry has capped the capacity of its boats to less than a quarter of what they could carry before the pandemic.
Like BART, ferry ridership has been recovering, but barely. The service carried 3,409 passengers last week, which is more than double the first week of June, and far above the spring, when several weeks had fewer than 1,000 riders. Before COVID-19, ferries were regularly carrying nearly 60,000 riders weekly.
There are new hand sanitizer dispensers aboard and the agency has stepped up cleaning of its boats and outfitted employees with personal protective equipment. In anticipation of services reopening, San Francisco Bay Ferry restored its Richmond to San Francisco route earlier this month.
And when it comes to luring back virus-wary riders, the vessels have at least one big advantage.
“I can be out in the open,” said Lisa Hamann, a legal secretary who works at a law firm on San Francisco’s Embarcadero.
When Hamann went back to work earlier this month, she swapped her normal BART ride through the transbay tube for the outdoor deck of a ferry from Oakland, where the combination of a stiff bay breeze and plenty of distance helps lower her risk even further.
“It’s very pleasant,” she said after stepping off the boat last week in Jack London Square.
But the new commute is less convenient. Hamann lives in Walnut Creek, so rather than hopping on one BART train, she now catches a ride with her husband when he drives to work near the ferry terminal. She said she would probably return to her train commute before too long, though.
“It depends on how crowded BART gets,” she said.