(05-08-2020, 10:59 AM)BostonCard Wrote: Since the MTA has turnstiles that require a valid pass to enter, it seems that would be a reasonable way to limit entry (yeah, you would still be susceptible to turnstile jumpers, but it would be helpful); just temporarily inactivate all existing NYC Metrocards and institute a new Metrocard that can be delivered to essential workers. This would be a heavy lift, of course, but these are extraordinary times, and just as I think assembling an army of contact tracers is extraordinarily challenging, but necessary, limiting access to the subway might have dramatically reduced transmissions.
BC
Do you seriously think that in a matter of days-to-weeks the MTA could reprogram its entire system to reject metrocards, create a new different metrocard that would only be accepted instead, identify the hundreds of thousands of essential workers who are eligible for the new card, and then get those cards to them (how? mail? courier? at workplaces they can't get to without said card?)? What happens if someone loses their card? Wait two weeks until they can get a replacement mailed to them?
BC, I love 98% of your ideas, but as someone who's lived and worked in NYC for years and rode the subway everyday, I think you really don't appreciate how infeasible that would be in the time period it would have been necessary for it to be useful.
And you still haven't explained what happens to the other 500,000 people per day that doesn't just transfer points of transmission to buses, etc.