Short on hand sanitizer and riders, Miami-Dade is cutting transit in coronavirus crisis

Miami-Dade announced transit cuts to begin Friday morning that will cause longer waits for trains and buses as an agency short on hand sanitizer and facing a ridership plunge tries to keep public transportation moving in the coronavirus crisis.

The county hasn’t been able to deploy hand sanitizer in all of its buses, and this week is awaiting results from a bus driver who is home and under isolation for possible COVID-19 exposure. An agency representative was not immediately available for an update Friday on the test results.

Even before the cuts, Miami-Dade was urging transit riders to stay away unless they had to take “essential” trips.

Scheduled wait times will grow from about five minutes at most stops to 10 minutes during rush hour, and for as long as 30 minutes late at night. Metromover will reduce arrivals by about 25 percent. And buses on dozens of routes will arrive less frequently.

With Metromover cars the smallest of the transit modes, the county said in a news release it would monitor cars for “overcrowding” of vehicles and stations as passengers have to wait longer to board.

Ridership figures from early in the week show trips down nearly 30 percent on buses and almost 40 percent on Metrorail. Even so, that left more than 150,000 people using the transit system during the pandemic emergency.

While there are hand-sanitizer dispensers at Metrorail stations and on trains, transit director Alice Bravo said the county doesn’t have enough for all buses.

“As we get it, we’re installing it,” Bravo said this week. “That stuff is in short supply.”

The flat surfaces on the buses are also wiped down overnight, Bravo said. During the day, the bus is only sprayed down with Lysol.

“Buses are being cleaned minimally, as usual, and only at the end of the day and with absolutely nothing being added to minimize or address the dangers of this killer virus,” union president Jeffery Mitchell said in a letter to county commissioners.

This report will be updated as more information becomes available.

This story was originally published March 20, 2020 at 7:10 AM.