Among the important lessons of the COVID-19 era in America is our astonishing ability to learn so little from so much. Yet an interesting illustration of the consequences of this failure can be demonstrated by how much one can learn from so little. If and when one thinks it through, one can do much in limited situations. But they have to be the right situations. And one must make the right choices. And sometimes a bit of luck is needed – like operating in a corridor relatively light in infections, and a blob of subsidy funds. As the saying goes,
Getting Students Back to School During COVID-19
Download the pdf Watch the webinar Because of social distancing, classrooms and schoolbuses can only be filled to one-fourth of their capacities. This constraint alone requires that a broad range of dramatic changes be made in order for our children to return to physical school without placing out entire population at greater risk than we already are. Using the key points below, state educational and transportation officials can tweak this model into a formal, detailed plan, and hand it to their respective governors. With such plans implemented, students in many or most states should be able to return to Zoom
Drivers, Health and Coronavirus
When those in my city began noticing, in early-March, New York City Transportation Authority employees had already experienced 41 deaths from Covid-19, and literally 6,000 workers were out on sick-leave. One suspects a significant percentage of them were infected with the virus. Otherwise, those ill with something else were likely more worried about it then they would have been during the Old Abnormal. The high percentage of bus and motorcoach drivers infected or killed by the virus does not sim- ply reflect their early exposure to a broad cross-section of largely (if not mostly) economically-deprived passengers packed, without masks, into
Motorcoach Survival in the Age of Covid-19, Part 3: The End of Charter and Tour Service – For Now
Over the years, I have predicted countless things in the pages of National Bus Trader. No reader will ever find me to have been wrong. Nor am I wrong about this: Some day, charter and tour service will come back stronger than ever. But that day is a long way off. The challenge is what to do in the meantime. Particularly from the Pandemic, America is in far deeper collapse than most people would have thought possible. Recent estimates have suggested that renters (and their families) of 20 million households could be evicted after the short-term bans on evictions expire.
Transit Survival in the Age of Covid-19
Two installments ago, I described alternative roles motorcoaches could play to make important contributions to the current pandemic, and which would keep drivers, mechanics and vehicles at work, and operating agencies and companies, manufacturers and suppliers in business. In the last installment, I described how to put motorcoaches back on the road in traditional roles. In this installment, I will outline some ideas for getting fixed route transit buses and passenger trains back to work, consistent with safety for both drivers and passengers. The ideas focus on NYC’s transit system as a model, since the challenges facing this system are
Motorcoach Survival in the Age of Covid-19 Part 2: On the Road Again
Hopes, dreams, truth, lies, prayers and politics aside, one of the burning industry questions is: How do we get on the road again? Willie Nelson’s unforgettable tune left us no clues. In Part 1 of this series, I outlined a num- ber of important rôles motorcoaches could and should have played immediately when the outbreak began. Performance of these roles would have helped the country cope with the virus. It would have helped the industry, its businesses and its drivers sur- vive it. It would have negated the related interruption in production, marketing, sales and maintenance of vehicles in support
Motorcoach Survival in the Age of Covid-19 Part 1: Roles and Opportunities
I would normally begin a series by exploring the origin of the problems. These would have included four decades of failure in multiple sectors of public transportation. Among its fellow modes, the motorcoach industry created the fewest of these failures. But the motorcoach industry has been limited in its capabilities to contribute to the current crisis by poor decisions made above and around it, and beyond its control, for at least four decades now – as I have noted in many NATIONAL BUS TRADER articles. Decades of mistakes now threaten the motorcoach industry’s very survival. But they have also compromised
Drivers v. Robots, Part 9: Speed Inflation
There are many dangerous transportation practices (or malpractices) which robots could help prevent or discourage. It is important to acknowledge when these deterrents are not employed. One failure is the refusal to control vehicle speed and the spacing between vehicles. Another is the socio-economic, institutional and/or political failure to employ a decades-old technology that would put a stop to this practice. These practices have been compounded by other developments in recent years. During my decade in paratransit operations, my company deployed vans and minibuses: Relatively high centers-of-gravity and lots of surface area along the sides. As a formal contract provision,
Drivers v. Robots, Part 8: Collecting the Fares, Skimming the Passengers
Robots have replaced transportation management for decades. They are now replacing drivers. And they are betraying top agency and company officials (see Drivers v. Robots, Part 7: Betrayal by Robots, NATIONAL BUS TRADER, February, 2020). Facilitated by more and more robots, decades of failure in fare collection have contributed to the need for more subsidies and a noticeably-lesser quality of service. The lesser quality of service has translated into reduced ridership. APTA recently announced the 2nd and 3rd quarters of 2019 as the first consecutive quarters of ridership increase since 2014 (Passenger Transport, January 13, 2020). Public transportation is eating
Drivers v. Robots, Part 7: Betrayal by Robots
Robots have decimated sectors of public transportation, like taxis and limousines. They have contributed to ridership decline in other sectors, like transit. And they have led to dramatic decreases in efficiency in still others, particularly paratransit and non-emergency medical transportation service. Robots will also contribute to a radical restructuring of public transportation as we know it (see “Drivers v. Robots, Parts 4 and 5” (NBT, November and December, 2019). That robots have replaced large numbers of management personnel is well-known. This has been going on for decades. It is now clear that they can also replace drivers, and have already
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