Title
Bus Service Recovery Measures
Description
Request to authorize the City Manager, or his designee, to begin restoring specific transit service operations to more standard operating practices based on reaching specific indicators as outlined in Attachment A. The recommended measures and associated indicators have been reviewed and incorporate guidance received from the City’s COVID-19 public health consultant. The recommended operating practices will be restored incrementally and will take place only after specific indicators have been achieved for each particular area of transit operations.
Report
Summary
Throughout the pandemic, the City’s Public Transit Department (PTD) and Valley Metro have actively responded to the COVID-19 virus by implementing various safety measures to protect transit passengers and personnel. These safety measures included implementing rear-door bus passenger boarding, instituting visual fare validation, enhancing vehicle and station cleaning measures, separating the driver and passenger areas on buses with Plexiglas, establishing on-board social distancing measures, requiring face coverings on public transit, and modifying transit service levels.
To develop steps toward restoration of transit service operations while ensuring essential transit workers are protected, PTD worked closely with the City's transit contractors as well as transit union leadership. Together they have already coordinated a vaccination event focused on transit personnel, held in March 2021, and they are continuing to identify additional opportunities for transit workers to receive vaccinations.
Attachment A outlines the staff recommended recovery measures along with the indicators required to be achieved prior to implementation.
Purpose
In developing steps toward service restoration, PTD focused on the following areas that will be key to ridership recovery (see Attachment A for full details):
- Front-door bus boarding and fare collection;
- Social distancing on buses and vehicle capacities;
- Mask use requirements on transit;
- Transit service levels;
- Transit center and city facilities access; and
- Enhanced vehicle cleaning and sanitizing protocols.
Some safety measures may remain in place to ensure that transit passengers and personnel remain protected. For example, the use of new cleaning/disinfection chemicals, installation of hand sanitizer dispensers on buses, fogging of transit-vehicle interiors, more frequent changing of transit-vehicle air filters, and increased cleaning of high-touch areas on transit vehicles (and at light rail stations) are expected to continue for the long-term. PTD is also working with transit-vehicle manufacturers to explore on-board technology that can be incorporated into upcoming transit-vehicle builds, such as improved air flow and filtration systems.
Department
Responsible Department
This item is submitted by Deputy City Manager Mario Paniagua and the Public Transit Department.