The manager of Timmins Transit says the coronavirus prevention measures on its buses are in line with all public transit agencies in Ontario. They’re all following public health recommendations.
Fred Gerrior says social distancing is the big one, using only the back door and staying away from the driver. Maintaining six feet between passengers is a different matter.
“Our ridership is down. Obviously a lot of different things are closed right now, so there’s less people that are travelling amongst the community itself,” he points out. “So that’s kind of automatically kind of happened with social distancing.”
Social distancing is also behind the waiving of fares.
“What we decided to do is make things free for a bunch of reasons, but in particular if you have the front fare box closed off, then that makes sure there’s some social distancing between the driver and the fare box and other passengers as well.”
While Transit is encouraging riders to keep at least six feet between each other, Gerrior admits it’s impossible to enforce.