THE PROBLEM:

The Centre Area Transit Authority (CATA) in Centre County, Pennsylvania recently released its guidelines for COVID-19 during the upcoming school year. CATA provides bus service to students at Penn State University as well as the surrounding communities. The guidelines are not enough to ensure the safety of students who need their services to commute to and from campus. Currently, their COVID-19 plan is unsafe and impractical for those using their service. 

CATA has implemented mandatory mask-wearing. Their website states that social distancing is recommended when possible. When I asked for a comment on this in a phone call with CATA, I was informed that social distancing would be enforced. I was not given specifics as to how they would achieve this and the statement is in direct contradiction to their website and reporting from Penn State University itself. Even if social distancing is somehow enforced, the responsibility would likely fall to bus drivers. I believe this should not be their responsibility and that it will be hard for them to effectively control passengers in that way while operating the vehicle. 

Additionally, they state that passengers should "schedule transit trips for lower volume travel periods to reduce density on buses" and that "Individuals will need to determine if use of CATA services during the COVID-19 pandemic is right for them." Both of these statements are impractical for a number of students at Penn State. A great number of students depend on CATA to commute to campus. Due to class schedules, it is difficult to plan bus rides around peak times. 

THE SOLUTION:

I believe to ensure the safety of riders, CATA should implement specific capacity limits on their vehicles. This would limit the risk of spreading COVID-19 on the buses. Bus drivers already keep a tally of how many passengers are riding the bus. If they had a maximum capacity, they could easily ensure that the bus was not made unsafe by allowing too many passengers on board. This is a solution that should be easy for CATA to implement because they already have the infrastructure to keep track of the number of passengers. 

I asked CATA via phone about this idea and I was told it was impractical because they have multiple bus sizes. Should they chose to, it would be quite simple to set capacities on a vehicle by vehicle basis instead of one blanket limit for the entire service. Each bus should have signage stating the maximum number of passengers and each driver should ensure the limit is not exceeded. This will greatly benefit the students and the community by reducing the risk of transmission while riding on transportation.

By signing this you are asking CATA to take greater steps to ensure the safety of riders and the entire community by implementing capacity limitations on their buses.