COVID-19 Changed How We Use Bus Transportation
STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — You shift your weight from one foot to the other as you watch a CATA bus head towards you. The people crowded around you gather near the curb to get on and you pull your mask above your nose as you follow suit, hyper-aware of just what germs might be on the pole you’re grabbing onto.
Over 46,000 students attend Penn State’s main campus, many of which have probably experienced this exact scenario. According to the CATA bus website, the total ridership by service for campus and community routes in the past month alone was 41,207 people.
That statistic is an almost 65% increase compared to this time last year. Many people have changed their modes of transportation due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Thomas Nast, 22, is a World Campus student who has been driving a school bus for the State College Area School District (SCASD) for almost a year. According to Nast, there are much fewer students riding the bus as the school district encourages parents to drive students to school. However, there are also fewer bus drivers.
“Some drivers have quit because they feel unsafe driving, whether that be for their own health or for family members’ health,” Nast said. “Many more people than we realize have family members who may be in a high-risk group.”
Angela Aiello, a junior majoring in cyber security, said she isn’t too concerned about taking public transportation during recent times.
Aiello said she can become annoyed when buses become packed, but more so because she doesn’t want to be around people and less in relation to concerns about COVID-19. One thing she said she disliked about the buses was the “relaxed” enforcement of mask-wearing.
During football season, after a game ends “the buses get extremely full and then people just stop wearing their masks,” Aiello said. “Because who cares, I guess.”
She’s not the only student with concerns about bus passengers wearing their masks correctly.
Lydia Summers, a junior majoring in political science, said she tries to avoid the bus as much as she can because she doesn’t like being around so many people in such a small space due to COVID.
“The other day the bus was so crowded and I saw some dude with his mask off just eating an apple,” Summers said. “Especially because I just had covid, I’m so frustrated when people don’t wear masks”
Summers prefers to walk when she can and use the bus as a last-ditch effort, finding this method of transportation more convenient.
For some of Nast’s students, taking the bus is the only way for them to get to school. Nast believes it’s his duty to make sure that their only method of transportation to and from school is a safe one.
His students have assigned seating to make contact tracing easier and windows are open to allow for better air circulation. Students are loaded onto the bus back to front and unloaded front to back to prevent further points of contact.
Nast believes that we’ve stepped back because of COVID-19 and recognized that we need to be more sanitary.
“We’ve seen this increase in attention to cleaning vehicles, disinfecting,” Nast said. “I think that stuff should stay the norm because we should still be trying to reduce the chances of infecting people no matter the illness.”
