Asheville, North Carolina City of Asheville, 13 Jan 2021

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From YouTube: Asheville Transit's Response to COVID-19

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January 13, 2021

A

So one of the things we did for the pandemic was social distance. We reduced the capacity for passengers on the bus to nine passengers.

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We wanted to make sure that they were able to social distance while riding the bus for driver safety. We implemented driver barriers.

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This is the driver barrier door that the driver used for protection. One of the other things we did was reduce passenger fares and have them loading and unloading at the back door to reduce the passenger driver, interaction.

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We ordered a thousand masks at the beginning of the pandemic for the operators and the passengers. Since then, we've passed out thousands of mass to passengers.

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When we cut capacity, we had to contract young's another transportation company to help us. We were leaving people behind people that needed to get to work or for their essential travel and so young's came and helped us with overloads by following routes that we had high ridership areas.

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I definitely believe operators are front line, employees a lot of people, don't think of them as ems or firefighters, but they transport people that are going to essential travel daily. So, yes, they are frontline employees.

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In the mornings, this is where the operators will come and check their temperature, but they must wear a mask. If not, this will.

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Once the operator put their mask on, they'll have to step away from the temperature checker and come back and take their temperature in the mornings. The operators will come and pick up some face masks if they don't they're, not wearing one themselves and they'll also pick up some sanitizing wipes, so they can clean their steering wheel and high touch areas that they'll be touching and if they also want to go back and wipe down the bus as well, the buses take care of, but that's just an extra precautionary.

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The operators will also pick up their clipboard for the day where dispatch has already placed masks for the passengers on their clipboard. These are also available at the transit station once they run out of mass. They can pick up more at the station.

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One of the first things that we did was put hand sanitizers on all the buses and then we also put hand sanitizers on the platform at the transit station inside the restrooms and in the lobby.

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In the beginning of the pandemic, we had to bring on extra people to help with the cleaning, so that included the garage here and also the transit station and buses.

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So the first thing they'll do is they'll, go ahead and clean the windows they'll go through and hit all the windows and all the glass back out to here, and we have.

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Bleach bleach, water and we rub down all contact every place, there's contact with where people walk and touch. That's all the rails.

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Seat ends and they'll go right down to the end of the bus and then right back down the other side with all the high contact touch areas, including the full cords any place where anybody's been touching or where you're most likely to be touching, and the next step would be to mop.

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We got some simple, green water and a little bit of lemon disinfectant for the mopping. That's after they sweep so they'll they'll sweep the whole bus out first, I need debris and then do the mopping starting in the back mop. The whole.

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So this is a uh a chemical, it's a food grade, chemical that kills bacteria fungus flu bacteria covered bacteria, and it is food, safe, food grade and generally used in kitchens.

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To all the seats and all the high touch areas again just to kill any kind of things that we.

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This is our general procedure. We do this every night when the bus is finished, with its bus run, they all get parked here in the lot stacked up and they come in one at a time and they are done one at a time- cleaned, disinfected and then parked for tomorrow, ready to go for the next day.

C

The same protocols for cleaning and disinfecting buses are also used at the transit station in downtown asheville, there's at least one major comprehensive cleaning every day and that big cleaning usually takes place in the evening after the station's closed. But staff also does cleanings throughout the day on high touch surfaces like handles railings seating areas, trash can lids and any other places that get a lot of touch.

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We want the riders to know that we have taken every safety precaution to ensure that their ride is safe and they make it to their destination safe and on.

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