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NY Times, April 16, 2020
In Detroit, virus or no virus, many people have a job they need to get
to and one way to get there. The bus.
By John Eligon
DETROIT — Paris Banks sprayed the seat with Lysol before sliding into
the last row on the right. Rochell Brown put out her cigarette, tucked
herself behind the steering wheel and slapped the doors shut.
It was 8:37 a.m., and the No. 17 bus began chugging westward across Detroit.
On stepped the fast-food worker who makes chicken shawarma that’s
delivered to doorsteps, the janitor who cleans grocery stores, the
warehouse worker pulling together Amazon orders.
By 9:15, every available row on the bus was occupied. Strangers sat
shoulder-to-shoulder. The city might be spread across 139 square miles,
but one morning last week there was no way to socially distance aboard
this 40-foot-long New Flyer bus. Passengers were anxious and annoyed.
Resigned, too.
“I don’t like it, but it’s something you have to do,” Valerie Brown, 21,
the fast-food worker, said through a blue mask. She was on her way to
work at a local Middle Eastern fast-food chain.
This hardscrabble city, where nearly 80 percent of residents are black,
has become a national hot spot with more than 7,000 infections and more
than 400 deaths. One reason for the rapid spread, experts say, is that
the city has a large working-class population that does not have the
luxury of living in isolation. Their jobs cannot be performed from a
laptop in a living room. They do not have vehicles to safely get them to
the grocery store.
And so they end up on a bus. Just like the No. 17 — a reluctant yet
essential gathering place, and also a potential accelerant for a
pandemic that has engulfed Detroit. It is a rolling symbol of the
disparity in how this virus is affecting Americans.
After the city’s roughly 550 drivers walked off the job for a day in
mid-March because of safety concerns, city officials put in effect new
measures. Riders had to enter through the back doors. Drivers would be
offered gloves and masks. Buses would be cleaned more frequently.
Later, Mayor Mike Duggan said all of the city’s front-line employees,
including bus drivers, would get $800 a month in hazard pay. He also
announced that masks would be made available to riders on all buses.
But on the first day of the mask initiative last week, there were no
masks on board the No. 17 bus Rochell Brown was driving.
A manager told her that riders were not required to wear them.
Ms. Brown, 49, shook her head and thought about a colleague who died
this month from complications of Covid-19, the disease caused by the
coronavirus. “It should be mandatory,” she said of the masks.
She saw herself at risk of a similar fate. She had a heart attack two
years ago and has hypertension. The night before this ride, her doctor
suggested she take time off for her safety.
Yet here she was, on a sun-soaked, mild spring morning, performing an
“essential” duty for $19.13 an hour, but without, she felt, the praise
and appreciation that police officers and emergency medical workers
received. No one was peering out of a window clapping for her. Her bus
was not even equipped with masks.
The route tells the story of these bizarre times. It traces streets
devoid of traffic, winds through the completely empty parking lot of a
temporarily shuttered mall and dips into the bustling parking lot of a
grocery store, one of the few businesses that can still attract big crowds.
That’s where Demetrius Jordan, 37, hops off to work his job as a
janitor. First order of business at work: wash his hands. The trip was a
necessary risk for Mr. Jordan, who said he worried most about the people
whose only respite from the elements was a seat on the bus.
“My concern is about the homeless people on the bus,” he said, adding
that they were endangering themselves and others. “Are they being
checked out?”
Drivers and passengers going to work say that is not happening. This
trip on the No. 17 attracted riders headed to the store, to visit
friends and family, and at least one homeless man.
Riders should be required to present proof that they are performing
essential duties, Ms. Brown said.
“I would appreciate that — show some paperwork why you’re out here, what
I’m risking my life for,” she said. “To me, too many people don’t care.”
A rider stepping off another No. 17 bus vented her frustration.
“I’m an essential worker,” she yelled. “I have to get out here and get
the bus, but I’m tired of getting on this bus with people that want to
visit other people because they ain’t working and they’re at home and
they’re bored.”
“It was kind of irritating because there was a lot of space,” she said
later. “I was like, why do you want to sit right next to someone when
there are so many seats?”
With roughly the front third of the bus blocked off to protect the
driver, passengers that morning were left with 29 seats to choose from.
At peak ridership, there were 21 people on board at a single time.
Despite a statewide stay-at-home order, the buses are often packed, Ms.
Brown said. If a bus is too crowded, she will sometimes wait for the
next one. She does not like taking chances.
She lives with her mother, who is 42 and recently battled pneumonia. Ms.
Brown does not want to bring the coronavirus home to her, or to her
father and three siblings who also live in the four-bedroom house in the
neighboring town of Eastpointe.
“I’m risking bringing it home,” said Ms. Brown, who rides the bus seven
days a week. “And I work at a restaurant. It’s a high risk for it, and
you can’t do anything about it really if your job is still open.”
The bus made it to the end of the line in a brisk hour and 38 minutes.
It headed back the other direction, and as more and more passengers
piled on — most wearing masks — tensions rose.
When a rider tried to take a seat next to a young man with an American
flag bandanna tied around his neck, the young man stopped him and
pointed him to another seat. He then pulled the bandanna over his nose
and mouth and tightened it.
An older woman carrying two shopping bags wedged herself into a seat in
front of two riders. One of those riders recoiled, wondering why the
woman had come so close. “Excuse me,” she said, “the six-feet distance.”
Ms. Banks, who sprays her seat with Lysol before sitting, wondered
whether the reduced service contributed to the packed buses. During the
week, the buses are running on the Saturday schedule, meaning they come
less frequently.
“I take my own precaution by disinfecting; I still don’t think it’s
safe,” she said.
She was “a little scared” about riding the bus, she said, and sometimes
asked her co-workers for a ride. Ms. Banks, 27, said she worried that if
she became infected, she would pass on the virus to others because her
job with the National Guard often has her around a lot of people.
John Porter spread out on the back seat in black sweatpants and an
unzipped brown jacket, his mustachioed face uncovered. He was headed
home after his wife took the car to work.
“I believe in the Lord,” Mr. Porter, 63, said. “If it’s going to happen,
it’s going to happen.”
A.J. Harris, 24, wore a mask but said he was not concerned about riding
the bus. His attitude seemed more of resignation than bravado.
“These buses have been dirty long before the coronavirus was going on,”
said Mr. Harris, on his way to work at an Amazon warehouse. “You got on
the bus every day with people having H.I.V. and bedbugs, all types of
diseases. It’s just another dirty bus coming along.”
She does not allow anyone to stand — most other drivers do, so
passengers tend to gripe when she tells them to sit. She will pass up
stops when her bus is full, though she is loath to do that because she
knows that some people need to get to work on time.
As she zoomed past a couple of stops, waiting riders threw their arms in
the air. One person threw a plastic shopping bag at the bus.
Ms. Brown sees the disgruntled reactions and hears the snide comments
coming from the back of the bus. On her way back to the beginning of the
line, a man cursed her because she would not let him off between stops.
She arrived back to the first stop — on a wide road between a hospital
and brick bungalows — at 11:57 a.m. Three hours and 20 minutes, and she
had had enough.
Shortly after she stepped off the bus, a couple of passengers came
asking for masks. Another driver who did not have masks on his bus would
not let them get on without one. She did not have any, she told them,
and they vented their frustration.
“This is stressful,” Ms. Brown said, and right there she decided it was
best she followed her doctor’s advice. She was taking a two-week medical
break.
This week, things were getting worse for riders, Valerie Brown, the
fast-food worker, said in a text message. Officials had put signs on
some seats, asking passengers to leave them vacant, but the message was
being ignored, she wrote. It was standing room only on one ride, she
said, yet the driver continued to pick up riders.
Ms. Brown texted two face-slapping emojis. “It’s never going to get
better here.”
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