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'Everybody Is Very Scared': Struggle to Keep Apart on Subway

Associated Press

   NEW YORK - They let trains that look too crowded pass by. If they
   decide to board, they search for emptier cars to ride in. Then they
   size up fellow passengers before picking the safest spot they can find
   to sit or stand for commutes sometimes lasting an hour or more.

   This quiet calculus is being performed daily by people who must keep
   working during the coronavirus pandemic and say the social distancing
   required is nearly impossible to practice in the enclosed spaces of New
   York City's public transit system.

   The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that people should
   stay 6 feet (2 meters) apart. But even though ridership has plummeted
   in the city, making jam-packed trains and buses the exception rather
   than the rule, passengers aren't always guaranteed even 6 inches (15
   centimeters).

   "Everybody is very scared," Shaderra Armstead, a health care clinic
   receptionist who rides the subway to work, said this week. "They're
   trying to keep their distance from each other, but it's impossible."

   "It makes me not want to go on the train at all," she said. "I'm
   nervous every day, but I still have to go."

   Protecting passengers

   Riders on some trains in Brooklyn and Queens this week sat or stood in
   some cars within a few feet of one another, some with their faces
   uncovered, while keeping their distance from homeless people camped
   out. At the same time, there are images showing subway platforms mostly
   empty at times they'd typically be crowded.

   Transit officials say they're working harder than ever to protect
   passengers and their own workers amid a pandemic that has killed more
   than 7,000 New Yorkers in just a few weeks, mostly in the city and its
   suburbs. Several suburban counties in New Jersey and Connecticut have
   also registered significant numbers of deaths.

   The virus has also taken the lives of 41 employees of the Metropolitan
   Transportation Authority, which runs the city's buses and subway as
   well as many commuter trains. For most people, the new coronavirus
   causes mild or moderate symptoms, but, for some, especially older
   adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more
   severe illness and lead to death.

   "We want as little social density and as much social distance as we can
   get," MTA Chairman Patrick Foye said in a radio interview Tuesday.

   Foye, who also got the virus but is doing fine, called scenes of
   crowding on trains "episodic" and said that safety measures are working
   well enough that complaints by riders about overcrowding have dried up
   in recent days.

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