Smotritch: Coronavirus restrictions will impact future transportation
In his statement, he detailed the various issues and the ministry's efforts to alleviate them.
By OMRI RONA bus driver wears a mask following the outbreak of coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in the Manhattan borough of New York City, New York, U.S., March 20, 2020.(photo credit: REUTERS/CARLO ALLEGRI)
Transportation Minister Betzalel Smotrich came out with a statement on Friday explaining the various issues plaguing public transportation due to coronavirus restrictions and the ministry’s efforts to alleviate them.“The return to a ‘corona-routine’ has presented to us a complex and impossible-to-manage challenge. In order to keep the passengers healthy, we can not have more than 20 passengers on any bus,” Smotrich said. “That is roughly a third of the normal capacity of a bus on regular days. The simple conclusion is that we need three times as many buses than we needed previously.“The whole idea of opening society back up again is to maintain distance, and that is simply not possible on a crowded bus, and thus we have the working assumption that this restriction will stay with us for a long time.”However, the challenge is about more than the number of passengers; there are also issues with spacing and the amount of available employees.“We have a limited fleet of 10,000 buses and 16,000 drivers who work on shifts (there is a maximum of hours a single drivers can work, for obvious reasons),” he explained. “That means that in order to give people the same level of service we had before the crisis we would need 30,000 buses and 45,000 drivers, which is something we cannot do.”In an attempt to alleviate these issues, according to Smotrich, the ministry will return all buses to operation, changing the courses of buses to better accommodate busy lines, getting buses from traveling agencies and using “smart-transportation” apps, which allow for a dynamic change in course while on the road. Additionally, there has been talk of giving IDF soldiers dedicated traveling arrangements.
