3 minute read
Improving Public Transportation
Beyond COVID, the need for safe and accessible transportation is a must.
WHEN COVID-19 STRUCK with force in March 2020, much of the workforce in wealthy countries quickly shifted to remote work. That option wasn’t available for a large majority of workers in Latin America, especially those employed in factories and the service sector. They needed to reach their jobs and relied on trains and buses to get there. In big cities such as Bogotá, Mexico City, and Panama City more than half the population commutes on public transportation.
Could the virus spread rapidly there? What could be done to curb transmission? Policymakers needed answers to such questions quickly. Not much was known about COVID in those early days, but a robust body of evidence about how other respiratory infections spread was already available. Researchers worked at high speed to synthesize the available knowledge.
“A systemic epidemiological review takes a lot of time,” said Nancy Paulina López Olmedo, PhD, a researcher at the Instituto Nacional de Salud Pública de México. The institute is part of the Network for Urban Health in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC- Urban Health) and the SALURBAL study, both coordinated by the Drexel Urban Health Collaborative. “We needed information a lot more quicky and conducted a rapid review in just two weeks.”
That swift scan of the literature confirmed the potential risks of contagion, especially to the disadvantaged groups that depend most on public transportation. By June, the Mexican government had adopted the recommendations put forward by the researchers, who continued to update them in light of new studies. “In an emergency situation, we need to act on the basis of what we know and then make changes as more information becomes available,” emphasized López Olmedo. Expanded findings were published in the Spring of 2021 in Salud Pública de México, following a more traditional review process. “Our core recommendations did not change.”
The research team’s core recommendations to reduce the risk of COVID transmission on public transportation:
• Require a mask at all times and provide guidelines for its proper use.
• Reduce the number of passengers on each bus and train, running them more frequently and staggering school and workday schedules to compensate.
• Limit speaking, singing, eating, and shouting during journeys. This upends cultural norms in Mexico, where musicians commonly perform in the Metro and passengers use their cell phones, but persuasive data indicated it had to be done.
• Keep windows open and modify air conditioning systems to provide adequate ventilation without recycling indoor air.
• Limit travel time where possible, ideally to less than 30 minutes. This requires congestion-reducing adjustments, such as designated bus lanes and restrictions on the use of private cars.
• Install handwashing stations.
• Diversify public transport options, providing discounts for certain populations and improving connectivity between bus and train lines and active transport (cycling or walking) routes.
Although COVID will subside, the importance of safe and accessible transportation will not. “This is an opportunity to improve things,” suggested López Olmedo. “COVID highlighted the needs, but pollution and climate change also tell us we need to plan for safe and equitable public transportation.”
