Brian Sherlock is a hardcore geek with a fondness for deep dives into science journals. When the COVID-19 pandemic struck, Sherlock, who’d been a bus driver for 40 years, knew it would cripple mass transit and pose grave dangers to the people who drive and ride on buses. The problem, he saw instantly, is the airflows on buses, and the solution, he also saw, was a range of ways that bus drivers and riders could be protected, and the airflows redirected.
Sherlock began tackling air quality issues during his decades of navigating buses through Seattle, where his projects came to the attention of his Amalgamated Transit Union officers. Now working with the ATU as a safety specialist, Sherlock has proposed diagnoses and suggestions on mitigating the risks of coronavirus on public transit that have been informed by his work with academic and government experts. Transit systems certainly need the help, with personal protective gear in short supply and bus and train operators working in enclosed spaces.
For too long, creative solutions to some of the most fundamental safety concerns facing transit operators and riders eluded transit officials or were quickly prohibited by managers who clung to ludicrous rules against simple fixes. With ridership cratering and amid growing fears of a second, harsher wave, however, transit agencies are now scurrying to step up precautions against the virus, some more successfully than others.
Much about the airborne virus was (and remains) unknown, but many transit officials mishandled the crisis early on by failing to ensure the safety of frontline transit workers compelled to confront countless touch points (doors, seats, poles, stop-request buttons), riders who didn’t wear masks, and the impossibility of social distancing that’s inherent in the “mass” in mass transit.
Bus drivers, who endure some of the greatest daily stresses, were told point-blank in New York not to wear masks since they were not part of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority uniform. (Union leaders directed operators to wear masks anyway.) Despite the absence of masks, gloves, and hand sanitizer for bus drivers in Portland, Oregon, officials at TriMet, the Metro Portland transit agency, ordered one ingenious operator to take down a clear, dollar-store shower curtain he’d rigged up to protect himself. In Philadelphia, SEPTA workers threatened to shut the system down if their demands for limits on riders and other safety precautions were not met.
Across the country, management’s failures took an appalling toll. About 200 transit workers have died during the pandemic.
With the summer air-conditioning season now in full swing, agencies need to rethink how to handle air quality in buses. Sherlock recalls that in his early years on the job, his buses had no air-conditioning in the summer. When the heat became unbearable—temperatures in buses can rise to more than 130 degrees—he would park near a sprinkler system, jump off, and get drenched before continuing his route. Many of his co-workers suffered heatstroke or came down with respiratory ailments due to the poor conditions on buses.
Today, buses are routinely air-conditioned—but if the air-conditioning system in a bus cannot be adjusted to allow fresh air to flow into the vehicle and lacks filters or a sterilization system like ultraviolet light, virus particles and bacteria can spread throughout the bus. According to Sherlock, controlling bus airflows to maximize the circulation of fresh air from outside the vehicle and adding sophisticated filters to sterilization systems are two effective ways to minimize health risks to bus operators and passengers.
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A driver who turns on the “fresh air” settings, and selectively uses roof hatches and air blowers, can reduce COVID-19 transmission risks. Installing barriers between the driver and passengers also reduces risk to drivers, who spend long hours in tight quarters. Buses that cannot draw in fresh air in the front of the vehicle should be taken off the road, says Sherlock, who worked on the coronavirus project with engineers at the University of Washington’s Aerodynamics Department and the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute.
John Samuelsen, the Transport Workers Union’s International president, notes that there have been productive conversations in New York about barriers to protect drivers and even about air quality and filtration solutions in bus depots, rail barns, and crew quarters where operators report to and from work. But Samuelsen adds that conversations about ways to improve filtration systems on buses for riders “are pretty much nonexistent.”
The Federal Transit Administration has stepped up with funding for the airflow-barrier design project, spearheading a wider effort to modify buses and trains that don’t have fresh-air capabilities or high-grade filters. But the transit sector itself has not been nearly as focused. “Some transit agencies and manufacturers have been slow to move on these issues,” Sherlock says. Responses have ranged from outright denial to support for the science and engineering solutions. In certain cases, bus manufacturers have been unprepared to alter their products, and struggle to deliver what is needed.
Like a number of systems across the country, Portland’s TriMet had trouble providing PPE. And when TriMet dispensed with collecting fares on its nearly 660 buses, the agency failed to adopt the rear-door boarding that many other systems implemented to protect their drivers.
Some older buses still do not have barriers between drivers and passengers, according to Shirley Block, president of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 757, because the agency plans to take those vehicles out of service. (The driver whose shower curtain solution triggered the ire of TriMet managers remains healthy and now wears a mask, Block says.)
The mutual distrust between TriMet’s fiercely independent bus operators and their managers has undermined any sort of uniform adherence to the system’s air-conditioning protocols. TriMet managers directed drivers to keep windows closed and turn on the AC since it brings in fresh air, they said, and directs bacteria and virus particles outside the bus.
But few drivers believe that’s true. For drivers in the COVID-19 universe, there’s too little certainty about what actually works. So out on the road where drivers are in control, they improvise. Some drivers do turn the AC off and open the windows; others put the AC on and open the windows.
Dallas Area Rapid Transit is one of the few transit agencies that has effective bus ventilation and filtration systems that predate the coronavirus. Most of the system’s nearly 700 buses come equipped with ultraviolet germicidal irradiation—lights placed in air-conditioning ducts that clean the air automatically as it recirculates, killing viruses.
Three years ago, following the Ebola crisis, the agency purchased more than 40 buses that feature a system using positively charged ions that continuously clean and disinfect the air on the bus. DART also cleans its buses using foggers with an ionized hydrogen peroxide cleaning solution. (The agency also operates a four-line light-rail network. Two of the lines are cleaned every 60 minutes; the two others, every 90 minutes.)
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“Dallas has a history of keeping a well-maintained and updated fleet of buses,” says Kenneth Day, president of ATU Local 1338. Fights between agencies and unions are common to many cities, but the Dallas local has always had a “decent working relationship” with DART, according to Day, and has been spared some of the difficulties that have sapped the ability of many systems to deal effectively with the coronavirus threat.
Where Portland officials called a shower curtain a violation, Dallas bus drivers got the go-ahead to use clear plastic sheeting as a temporary stopgap measure, in tandem with existing barriers that had been installed to help protect drivers from physical assaults. This summer, DART is replacing those barriers with respiratory-droplet shields, which are floor-to-ceiling plexiglass barriers. Dallas has been collecting fares and using rear-door boarding on its buses. Once all the new shields are installed, DART plans to resume front-door boarding. The agency will also soon introduce dispensers for masks and hand sanitizer on its buses.
“PPE is the bare minimum,” says DART spokesman Gordon Shattles. “We made sure operators had everything they needed.”
Passengers and drivers are not required to wear masks on DART, but that situation could change as hospitalizations continue to surge in Dallas and in Texas overall. Some drivers, however, are still not convinced that COVID poses a threat or have wearied of the precautions. For such as these, DART has even reassigned employees who would have otherwise been laid off to go to bus depots and other work locations to hand out masks and hand sanitizer to operators and other employees. Day recognizes that while most people take the pandemic seriously, not everyone does. “That is something that we have to continue to work on,” the union leader says. “You can’t relax.”
Fears about COVID-19 transmission on public transit could persuade riders who’ve switched to cars to continue to drive—which does not bode well for the health of public transportation and anyone’s ability to get around town. “If you have a wholesale abandonment of transit, no one will move anywhere,” says Jack Clark of the Transportation Learning Center, a national research group based in Maryland.
Convincing petrified riders that pandemic precautions are not just a new episode of safety theater will not be easy. Designating transit for essential trips only sent a powerful message about the dangers of riding on buses and trains, which time and reopenings have not dispelled.
For his part, Sherlock continues to push for air quality improvements. The costs to transit agencies are negligible—a bus retrofitted with filters and UV lights pays for itself in about 18 months. After that, “it’s profit!” he says, his voice rising with every syllable: “Taking care of people saves you freaking money!”
This article is a part of our ongoing series on sustainable mobility, transportation, and climate.
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