AROUND THE REGION

This past week, GRTC announced that a second employee—a bus operator—had tested positive for COVID-19. The GRTC policy around this is that "any member of GRTC staff asking to be tested for COVID-19 regardless of any symptoms be placed on immediate paid leave and remain on paid quarantine until the test results are negative or they return to full health." Additionally, to help prevent the potential spread of the virus among GRTC employees—and possibly the public—the bus company has "asked that all operators and on-site staff schedule a COVID-19 test as soon as possible." The call for mass testing of employees and then mandatory paid quarantining has resulted in a dramatic cut to bus service over the weekend. From the press release: "GRTC plans to ensure there is at least one bus in service on all routes Saturday and Sunday, but that means some routes may have hourly service. Bus resources continue to be prioritized to high-ridership routes to encourage social distancing on-board." GRTC hopes to have test results back within a couple of days, at which point they can resume more regular service. Keep an eye on the service updates page for more information throughout the week.

On Monday, GRTC reduced bus service due to an operator call-out. You can read the original letter from the union to GRTC here (PDF), plus GRTC's response to the union (PDF) and GRTC's response to the call-out (PDF). C. Suarez Rojas at the Richmond Times-Dispatch has a good recap of the entire situation. Bus operators and other transit workers are essential employees doing dangerous—and critical—work during this time of crisis. Yet, with localities across the region slashing budgets as a result of the coronavirus, there's a real risk of deepening the Richmond region's decades-long underfunding of public transit. We must continue to work to ensure that GRTC has sufficient funding to pay transit workers appropriately while providing critical access to our region's essential employees.

ELSEWHERE

This piece from Jarrett Walker does a nice job highlighting how transit planning and policy-making will change as our cities begin to adapt to the coronavirus's longer-term impacts. Here's his thoughts on community engagement during a time with much uncertainty and rapidly-shifting priorities: "Expectations for exhaustive public outreach may need to be balanced against the need to make some decisions more quickly, such as about interim service restoration. The public will appreciate being consulted, even briefly, such as via text or social media. It will be more urgent than ever to ask the public just the right question, so that the answer we get is influential on our work."

—Ross Catrow