A bus in Petersburg by Petersburg Area Transit.

Transit agencies across Virginia and the country are struggling to find the right balance between protecting their staff from COVID-19 and maintaining essential service for people to get to work, healthcare, and the grocery store.

Petersburg Area Transit (PAT), which services the Tri-Cities, a conurbation just south of Richmond, appears to be the first in the nation to cease operations completely — at least for a day.

Closing time

On March 30 PAT announced all bus service would come to a halt in just two days’ time. What at first may have seemed like the set up for a twisted April Fool’s joke quickly became all too real as Tri-Cities’ residents realized the transportation they rely upon would disappear overnight.

Despite taking a number of precautions that have become industry best practices during this pandemic such as eliminating fares, switching to backdoor boarding only, and separating bus operators from the public with plexiglass, PAT’s General Manager, Charles Koonce, still made the drastic decision to stop serving all riders as of last April 1 at 4:30 pm save for 12 people who rely on paratransit.

In an interview on Wednesday Koonce explained, “We have to be proactive instead of reactive. As you watch the news you see the numbers are growing in Hopewell, Fort Lee, and Richmond. We are the first agency to close, but there are probably a lot of people who want to shut down their services too.”

In a pattern similar to the Greater Richmond Transit Company’s figures, PAT’s ridership has dropped roughly 40% since the start of the crisis. In both Richmond and Petersburg, vast pockets of poverty and low levels of car ownership combine to create populations that disproportionately rely upon public transportation compared to larger cities such as Washington, DC, that have seen their transit usage shrink by over 90% during the pandemic.

“Of the folks still riding the bus, 60 percent are riding the bus just to ride it,” said Koonce after taking an informal poll of riders on one bus Monday morning. “What we don’t want to happen is people who really could find another means of transportation to take advantage of the situation.”

However, PAT’s Deputy Director of Mass Transit, Stephanie Harris, admitted a number of riders were following guidelines to only take the bus for necessary trips.

“We did still have a few people using the services to access essential services and jobs,” conceded Harris in a Wednesday interview. “We did see an uptick in ridership as the Electronic Benefit Transfer cards (for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) were double loaded in anticipation of the start of the month.”

With only two days’ notice before the closure, PAT’s roughly 1,123 daily riders had little time to learn of the changes, let alone find alternate transportation to get to work, doctor’s appointments, or the supermarket.

Commenting on the decision to cease service and put all staff on fully-paid administrative leave, Folakemi Osoba, the City of Petersburg’s Public Information Officer, responded: “48 hours is a short amount of time, but this is a strange time for the world right now. With all the updates coming from the governor and the president, we had to act fast.”

PAT’s stoppage of all fixed route service proved especially surprising since the agency had just received an additional $83,000 dollars from the Department of Rail and Public Transportation (DRPT) to cover costs since switching to safer zero-fare service.

No PAT team members had tested positive for the novel coronavirus as of last week, but Harris explained, “This is our effort to flatten the curve. This was a purely public health decision. At this time we are able to operate, but if our staff got sick we wouldn’t be able to operate anyway.”

Fear and fallout

When asked how residents of the Tri-Cities were taking PAT’s decision to cease all fixed-route service, Koonce answered, “So far I haven’t had one complaint.” Even if they hadn’t yet relayed their concern to PAT’s General Manager, community leaders already had second thoughts about the decision.

“When I saw they were going to stop running the buses I questioned it. When it was decided to stop our public transportation I wondered how people were going to get around,” said City Councilmember Treska Wilson-Smith in an interview last Thursday. “Without the buses how was anyone going to get groceries, get to the doctor, or get to work—especially the people classified as essential personnel. People need the bus.”

State Senator Joe Morrissey who represents the City of Petersburg in the General Assembly expressed his thoughts on PAT’s closure via a press release on Thursday: “I do not think this was the appropriate course of action given the fact that many residents in Petersburg depend solely on public transportation in order to get to the grocery store, the pharmacy, the doctor’s office, or a close family member in need of care. It is my position that we need to keep this system open. I believe with proper social distancing implemented on the public transit system, the safety of passengers can be maintained during these difficult times.”

Bring back the buses!

After a call from state officials on Thursday, April 2—the first full day of PAT’s closure—the City of Petersburg reversed its decision and announced all routes of its public transportation would be operating on a normal schedule again starting the very next morning at 5:15 am.

In a Facebook live interview, Deputy City Manager Lionel D. Lyons stated, “We made a mistake. We jumped the gun. We should have consulted with the state and the federal government. They have reminded us very clearly that they have put dollars and cents in our budget to cover the full cost. The president, as well as the state government, have deemed our public transportation an essential service.”

Although bus service in Petersburg was restored within 36 hours thanks to the fast action of state officials, PAT’s sudden closure serves as a worrisome episode for the countless Virginians who rely upon public transportation to commute to work, to access healthcare, and to buy their groceries. In response to such fears, DRPT Director Jennifer Mitchell provides some assurance.

“We have issued guidance to systems to notify us of any service changes,” she said in an interview. “Our program managers are in almost daily contact with transit agencies, and we have provided them with best practices guidelines to respond to this pandemic.”

Wyatt Gordon is the senior policy manager for land use and transportation at the Virginia Conservation Network, and an adjunct professor at Virginia Commonwealth University's Department of Urban Planning. He's a born-and-raised Richmonder with a master's in Urban Planning from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa and a bachelor's in International Political Economy from American University.