The MTA is mulling reserved seating for subways and buses to ensure social distancing once New York begins reopening.
MTA Chairman and CEO Pat Foye said the idea is among several strategies the authority is kicking around to keep commuters and transit workers safe post-coronavirus lockdown.
“In that scenario customers, at least for some period of time, would be asked to make a reservation,” he said during a CRAIN’s New York Business panel Thursday.
“That is not something we’ve made a decision on; we’re not close to making a decision.”
The reservation system would have to use the MTA’s new and still limited OMNY payment system in conjunction with “Ticketmaster technology,” Foye added.
Foye acknowledged the incredible logistical hurdles to making such a system work, but wanted to float the concept to show the MTA is exploring all options — “everything is on the table,” he said.
“Obviously, a reservation system would have all sorts of complications here in New York, given 472 [subway] stations and, pre-pandemic, millions of passengers,” he said.
Transit advocates doubted reservations would be a workable solution.
“How would it work to reserve a seat on a subway train?” asked Ben Fried, a spokesman for TransitCenter.
“I think there could be a version of it at some of the biggest stations, where there’s some sort of monitoring of how crowded conditions are inside … but I think that would only be workable at certain stations.”
Fried believes employers will have to play a role in staggering hours or gradually bringing their workforces back to make sure trains and buses remain comfortably full.
“Unless you have people staffing every door of the train, I just don’t believe you’ll be able to control individual movements like that,” he added.
Foye reiterated that the MTA’s top concern at the moment is securing more federal funding to make the agency whole after the pandemic decimated public transit ridership.
“Increasing transit service when the government begins to lift New York on PAUSE downstate is going to be incredibly important to the recovery of New York City and the New York City region. It can’t happen without robust and reliable and safe service by the MTA,” Foye said
“The regional economy’s and frankly the national economy’s recovery will be slowed and stunted if the MTA doesn’t get federal funding … but also if we’re not able to restore service in the way I just described,” he said.
Once the city does get moving again, Foye envisions a transit system where masks are mandatory for workers and riders. MTA employees will have to get their temperatures checked daily and in-station cameras will be used to monitor subway crowding levels, he said.
Cleanings will have to be intensified.
“There is no single step to it,” he said. “It is going to be a multiplicity of actions taken which will involve innovation and technology.”