The Washington Post - USA (2022-05-07)

A14 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.SATURDAY, MAY 7 , 2022

While the White House had sought $22.5 billion, key Senate lawmakers clinched a bipartisan deal for $10 billion in covid aid last month. But a dispute over the administration’s decision to relax pandemic restrictions at the U.S. border upended swift passage of the deal, which has now lan- guished for weeks. White House officials have said they’re concerned that a significant portion of the nation’s supply of antivirals and tests will be exhausted as a result of an anticipated increase in cases in the South this summer. Without those tools, they say the country would be unprepared for a fall and winter surge, and deaths and hospitalizations could dramati- cally increase. If Congress remains stalled, the official said, the administration would likely pull money that was set aside for more tests and therapeutics to purchase more vaccines — decisions that will leave the country more vulnerable than it should be. The projected summer wave in the South, which would mirror similar upticks in 2020 and 2021, is particularly concerning because of the region’s lower vacci- nation and booster rates. While deaths in the Northeast have held steady amid a sharp increase in cases in that region over the last several weeks, the South remains more vulnerable because fewer people have gotten the shots, the official said. That forecast is echoed by outside experts. “For some reason, we see a seasonality in these peaks. We’re seeing a very high rate of cases in the South during the summer months, possibly because so many people are in-

immune protections.
Many have warned that the
return to more relaxed behaviors,
from going maskless to partici-
pating in crowded indoor social
gatherings, would lead to more
infections. The seven-day nation-
al average of new infections more
than doubled from 29,312 on
March 30 to nearly 71,000 Friday,
a little more than five weeks later.
“What they’re saying seems
reasonable — it’s on the pessimis-
tic side of what we projected in
the covid-19 scenario modeling
run,” said Justin Lessler, an epi-
demiologist at University of
North Carolina Gillings School of
Global Public Health. “It’s always
hard to predict the future when it
comes to covid, but I think we’re
at a point now where it’s even
harder than normal. Because
there’s so much sensitivity, in
terms of these long-term trends,
to things we don’t understand
exactly about the virus and about
[human] behavior,” Lessler said.
Another modeler, epidemiolo-
gist Ali Mokdad of the University
of Washington’s Institute for
Health Metrics and Evaluation,
said in an email Friday that a
winter surge is likely. His organi-
zation, which has made long-
term forecasts despite the many
uncertainties, just produced a
new forecast that shows a modest
bump in cases through the end of
May and then a decline until the
arrival of winter.
The administration official
said the latest forecasts are being
shared with lawmakers on Capi-
tol Hill as the White House seeks
to restart stalled negotiations
over appropriating more funding
for the coronavirus response.

WAVE FROM A

Administration warns

of next coronavirus wave

tion officials said they hope they will be able to distribute such boosters in the fall, particularly to the elderly and those most at risk of severe infection and death. Natalie Dean, a biostatistician at Emory University, said the longer the time period between coronavirus waves, the greater the number of people who will be vulnerable to infection because of waning immunity. “That just puts vulnerable people back at risk,” Dean said. “It seems likely there will continue to be these ups and downs.”

total guesswork,” said Jeffrey Shaman, an epidemiologist at Columbia University. “Predicting that they’re going to be success- ful, that’s guesswork as well.” Another big unknown that might affect the size and severity of another wave is whether there will be more effective vaccines available by fall. Both Pfizer and Moderna are working on new booster shots that combine different versions of the coronavirus to protect against variants, but it remains unclear whether they will be more effective than existing vaccines. Administra-

remains unknown. Omicron has since spun off many subvariants that are even more transmissible than the orig- inal strain. The BA.2 omicron subvariant continues to account for a majority of new infections in the United States, but the BA.2.12.1 subvariant is rapidly gaining ground and may soon become the most common strain. Meanwhile, two other highly transmissible variants, BA.4 and BA.5, have fueled a recent surge in infections in South Africa. “Predicting new variants that are going to spill out — that’s

side because its so hot there,” said Mercedes Carnethon, epidemiologist at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. Part of the administration’s challenge in responding to the pandemic is that the virus keeps mutating in ways that have some- times surprised scientists. Omi- cron, most notably, emerged in southern Africa with stunning speed in November with a package of mutations and came from a different part of the virus’s family tree than the delta variant it replaced. The origin of omicron

LEAH NASH FOR THE WASHINGTON POST People with and without masks s hop at the Portland Farmers Market on Wednesday in Oregon, where cases have risen for the fifth straight week. Across the country, the seven-day average of new infections more than doubled from 29, 312 on March 30 to nearly 71,0 00 on Friday.

BY IAN DUNCAN

The rate of complaints about
badly behaved airline passengers
received by the Federal Aviation
Administration dropped to its
lowest level in more than a year
the week after a judge voided the
Biden administration’s transpor-
tation mask mandate, agency
data released this week shows.
There were 1.9 complaints for
every 10,000 flights in the week
ending April 24, lower than the
average level in the last quarter of
2020, which was before the feder-
al mandate and the launch of an
FAA crackdown on dangerous
behavior.

The FAA did not offer a reason for why the rate of complaints fell. The figures had been declin- ing for weeks — although they crept up in the two weeks before the mandate was voided — and already were well below peak levels seen in early 2021. Still, the latest data could be a sign that lifting the mask mandate has eased tensions on planes, which was a desired outcome for many industry leaders. The transportation mask mandate was an outlier as the Centers for Disease Control and Preven- tion eased recommendations about masking as a way of slow- ing the spread of the coronavirus.

The CDC said this week that it still recommends passengers on planes and other forms of public transportation continue to wear masks. But that advice no longer has the force of law, and among airline passengers, at least, it appears few are masking. At a hearing with Transporta- tion Secretary Pete Buttigieg this week, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) said that on a recent flight he took from Houston to D.C., he estimat- ed 1 in 10 people wore a face covering. Cruz asked Buttigieg what he planned to do the next time he flies. “I’m not sure,” Buttigieg said. “It’ll depend on conditions that

day. I don’t have a flight today, but next time I do, I’ll think it over.” The picture on some transit networks is different than in the skies, according to reports gath- ered by Transit, an app that tracks public transportation schedules. In San Francisco, for example, its users reported that most passengers were wearing masks on 80 percent of trips. The figure was 74 percent on Los Angeles buses and 44 percent in New York, but a far lower 5 percent on transit in Utah. While the mask mandate in no longer in force, the FAA has said

it will continue to take a zero-tol- erance approach for instances of passengers disrupting flights. In early April, the FAA proposed record fines against two passengers and has called for an upward of $2 million in total fines this year. The agency has credited the policy with helping to bring down the number of conflicts. Sara Nelson, the president of the Association of Flight Atten- dants-CWA, which represents 50,000 flight attendants at 18 airlines, urged the industry to place more focus on alcohol-re- lated problems and a federal banned flier list. “The frequency of disruptive

and violent passengers is still way higher than pre-pandemic, and there’s still a lot of work to do to stop or mitigate these incidents on planes,” she said. The mandate had been subject to short-term extensions, even as the airline executives and labor leaders who had been among its strongest supporters called for it to end. At this week’s Senate Com- merce Committee hearing, Butt- igieg told Cruz that the most important thing “is that whether it’s on a flight or a bus or any- where else, respect is shown to those who wear masks and to those who choose not to.”

Complaints over u nruly airplane behavior drop after mask mandate ends

BY IAN DUNCAN

The shelter at Judy Stevens’s
bus stop is no match for New
Orleans’s fearsome rain. When it’s
wet, she takes refuge under a gas
station awning, then dashes to
the curb in her rain boots when
the bus arrives.
Even when it’s dry, Stevens, 56,
begins the hour-long ride to her
job as a medical technician in the
dark. Riders shine cellphone
flashlights on the bus stop sign to
attract the attention of approach-
ing bus drivers.
“When I go out of town, I take
pictures of other bus stops and
shelters and say, ‘This would be
real nice if we could have this,’”
she said.
Along much of the No. 94 route
Stevens takes into the city, there
are no shelters. That pattern is
repeated across the country: Less
than one-fifth of more than
122,000 bus stops served by 16 of
the nation’s largest transit agen-
cies have shelters, according to
data compiled by The Washing-
ton Post.
Shelters are a priority for bus
riders looking for somewhere to
stay dry or to sit down after a long
day at work. As record levels of
federal transit funding begin to
flow from last year’s $1 trillion
infrastructure package, plans for
thousands of new shelters pre-
sent a test of whether Washing-
ton’s promises to focus on racial
equity and the environment can
quickly translate into benefits for
transit users.
Much of the new federal fund-
ing is likely to go to major projects
like new rail lines or pricey elec-
tric buses, but advocates say tran-
sit leaders have a chance to show
they also can cater to passengers
who often lack other means of
getting around.
Steven Higashide, director of
research at advocacy organiza-
tion TransitCenter, said the lack
of bus shelters in American cities
underscores a lack of interest in
making basic improvements to

transit service. “Bus riders are more likely to be people who are marginalized in U.S. politics — more likely to be people of color and more likely to be low-income people — and that’s one reason why the state of bus transit has been so insuffi- cient,” he said. During a transit center ribbon- cutting ceremony this week in Illinois, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said the Biden administration is breaking with the

past in prioritizing transit invest- ments. “The commute has not always been an easy one, especially for people who had to walk blocks between transfers or had to wait outside in the elements, and oth- erwise found that their workday began on unpleasant terms some- times, thanks to the disinvest- ment of past generations that has now been replaced by a commit- ment to investment for the future,” he said.

Many large transit agencies are planning for more shelters as they redesign bus networks, aiming to make the most widely available form of transit more appealing. The Department of Transporta- tion is seeking to encourage those efforts, helping cities find ways to tap highway funding to rebuild sidewalks and improve bus ac- cess. Wide disparities exist in shelter coverage on major bus networks. More than 40 percent of stops in the Las Vegas area have shelters, the result of a campaign launched a decade ago. In the Washington region, about 27 percent of Metro- bus stops have a shelter. In Pitts- burgh, the figure is about 8 percent. “Why this number is low com- pared to our peer agencies would only be speculation on my part,” said Adam Brandolph, a spokes- man for the Port Authority of Allegheny County, which operates the Pittsburgh region’s bus system. He said the agency is working to install more. Higashide said the $109 billion in transit funding from the infrastructure law offers a chance to rethink who benefits from federal spending as agencies put a new emphasis on long-neglected bus stops. Alex Wiggins, chief executive of the New Orleans Regional Transit Authority, acknowledged the region’s leaders haven’t always in- vested in the kind of infrastructure riders want most. The agency has set aside $1 million for the coming years to install shelters and won a federal grant for two transit hubs designed to protect from the weather. “As we continue to provide transit mobility through the pandemic, the real focus is what do our customers need,” Wiggins said. “Comfort and safety are real- ly at the top of our consider- ations.” Other transit systems have similar plans. The Maryland Transit Administration secured funding

for shelters in Baltimore under a grant program expanded by the infrastructure law. A $414 million plan approved by voters in Hous- ton in 2019 calls for overhauling bus service and expanding the number of shelters. The system in recent days celebrated reaching 2,500 accessible stops. In Boston, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority launched a plan in 2019 to over- haul transit service that aimed to double the number of shelters. A rider survey that year showed passengers ranked shelters and benches as a top way to improve comfort. The agency also cited research that found better stops reduce perceptions of how long passengers wait for a bus. The New Orleans plan also points to challenges. Shelters can be bought for as little as a few thousand dollars, manufacturers say, but prices can run much higher. The RTA expects to add 25 more by the end of this year at a cost of $33,000 each. Supply chain bottlenecks are also driving up prices and delivery times for aluminum. “It has been a struggle to get material in,” said Larry Hagan, a project manager at manufacturer Austin Mohawk. “The lead times have gone from eight weeks to eight months.” Red tape could also present an obstacle. In response to questions from The Post, some transit agencies said they couldn’t provide complete data on their number of stops with shelters because re- sponsibility falls on the local department that maintains city streets. In other parts of the country, shelters are maintained by private companies who use them as billboards. Transit advocates say passengers also need safe, accessible sidewalks to get from their homes or work to the bus stop. The Transportation Depart- ment in recent weeks launched an effort to help state and local agencies consider how to use highway

dollars to repair sidewalks and improve transit stops. A significant chunk of the $350 billion in highway funding included in the infrastructure package can be shifted to projects on local streets, including bus shelters, according to the department. The department highlighted a project in the Houston suburbs as an example of the possibilities. Texas officials used federal highway money to upgrade sidewalks with the goal of making it easier to get on buses. Transit agencies are also facing a slump alongside the influx of federal money. Many lost riders and fare revenue during the pandemic while also struggling to recruit bus drivers. In the short term, some agencies are battling would-be riders’ fears about crime. In the long run, increased telework means some riders might never return or will ride less frequently. Despite the difficulties, Hi- gashide said adding more shelters and improving sidewalks wouldn’t have to be a huge effort in many cities. “There is a lot of low-hanging fruit that would make riders’ lives better and draw new riders into the system that doesn’t require a lot of planning,” he said. The experience of the Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada suggests major improvements are possible. In 2011, officials at the Las Vegas-area agency launched what became an $18 million campaign to move bus shelters back from the street and install more of them. The agency also tapped $4 million in federal funding to improve light- ing. In New Orleans, Stevens said making shelters more widely available would be a sign that leaders care as much about the workers who are as vital to the city as the tourists they serve. “What about them not getting soaking wet when they get to work?” she said.

Bus stops pose an equity test for infrastructure funding

Source: City and regional transit agencies IAN DUNCAN/THE WASHINGTON POST

Shelters are a priority for bus riders, but there are disparities in how many are installed on major transit networks.

Stops Shelters 05 ,000 10,000 15,

*LA Metro numbers include only the city of Los Angeles

Bus shelters at major transit agencies

NJ Transit

MTA - New York

WMATA - Washington

METRO - Houston

LA Metro*

MARTA - Atlanta

MBTA - Boston

King County Metro - Seattle

AC Transit - Oakland

SDMTS - San Diego

TheBus - Honolulu

RTC of Southern Nevada - Las Vegas

SFMTA - San Francisco

The Washington Post - USA (2022-05-07)

Get our desktop app

Company

Features

Documentation

Resources