At least 41 transit workers have died, and more than 6K more have fallen sick or self-quarantined. Crew shortages have caused over 800 subway delays and forced 40% of trips to be canceled in a single day. The average wait, usually 4 minutes, is now 40
NEW YORK — At least 41 transit workers have died, and more than 6,000 more have fallen sick or self-quarantined. Crew shortages have caused over 800 subway delays and forced 40% of train trips to be canceled in a single day. The average wait for some trains, usually four minutes, has ballooned to 40 minutes.
As the virus spread, many workers became so concerned that they took measures into their own hands: They cordoned off seats with duct tape to distance drivers from riders and used their own masks and homemade disinfectant at work, only to be reprimanded by supervisors. Foye said the MTA then decided to go further than that, before the CDC changed its advice on masks. He said it had already provided 460,000 masks to workers, in addition to thousands of face shields and 2.5 million pairs of gloves.
But already, the absences have crippled the agency’s ability to operate its sprawling public transit network, the largest in North America. It has been forced to slash service beyond what was laid out in its initial emergency plan, which reduced service by 25% at the end of March. The authority is disinfecting train cars and buses every three days and has urged riders to wait for empty trains to mitigate the overcrowding problems caused by reduced service.
“I work with patients of all ages who are some of the most immunocompromised in society,” said Allie Ebben, a licensed medical social worker who lives in Harlem and works in the Bronx. “If I am riding the subway that is packed full and coming in to see my patients, I am a vector for the virus.” When some workers wore their own masks, they were told to remove them because they violated uniform policy, according to management responses to two formal complaints reviewed by The New York Times.
MTA officials said the pandemic plan was a guiding framework, rather than a step-by-step manual. Still, the agency did not implement many aspects of the plan until nearly a month after the virus had arrived in New York, workers say. On the subway, some workers carried homemade bleach and water solutions in spray bottles to clean their booths on the train, which new workers rotate into each time a train completes a run.
In response to complaints, the agency increased the number of workers assigned to the hotline to 200, from 50. Now 95% of calls are answered, and average wait times on the line are about one minute, according to a transit agency spokeswoman.
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