NEW YORK — Ultraviolet radiation robots that sanitize subway cars in a flash. Nanoparticles that kill Covid-19 on bus poles and subway seats for three months, non-stop, after just a single application.
In the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s headlong search for ways to woo riders back to the nation’s biggest transit system once the pandemic eases, no idea is too outlandish.
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Subways and buses are the circulatory system of the most economically important city in America — they carry more than 5 million people a day during normal times, from grocery clerks to investment bankers, to and from their homes and jobs.
They’ve also likely been a central conduit for the spread of Covid-19 and are seen as among the factors in New York becoming the epicenter of the crisis.
The city’s — and by extension the country’s — economic recovery from the pandemic may well depend on New Yorkers’ willingness to return to the subway. The city’s 8.4 million residents cannot all drive to work. Nor can they all walk or bike, though those methods will likely gain in popularity during the recovery.
Rather, it’s up to Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s famously sclerotic Metropolitan Transportation Authority — whose leaders only weeks ago assured riders it was safe to travel the trains and buses — to somehow reassure them it’s safe to come back in the coming months.
“It’s going to be a long time before I would let any member of my family into a crowded bus or subway,” said Dick Ravitch, the former MTA chairman credited with saving the subway from financial collapse in the 1980s, in an interview this week.
Officials are exploring the feasibility of taking the temperatures of some passengers before they enter the subway system. They’re mining the experience of their global counterparts from Seoul to Milan who are ahead of New York on the pandemic’s trajectory.
And in recent weeks, the MTA has begun applying a chemical compound to surfaces in its subways and buses that authority officials say could continuously eradicate Covid-19 for up to three months
After a period of time, the MTA swabs the surfaces and sends the samples to a lab to determine if there are any microbes, germs or viruses on them, an official told POLITICO, requesting anonymity because he was not authorized to speak with the press.
The MTA declined to identify the chemical it says it has applied to each of its subway cars and about a quarter of its buses, except to say that it is an “anti microbial biostatic compound.” Workers administer it using an electrostatic applicator.
“We’re working with federal and other labs to determine whether the product has a virus-killing efficacy that lasts beyond the initial application,” said MTA chairman Pat Foye.
MTA officials declined to name the product’s manufacturers, but expressed hope that their claims of long-term virus-killing capacity prove true.
“If that were to occur, that would be a great development,” Foye said. “We have not had it confirmed, not to say that it won’t be confirmed.”
“It doesn’t pose any health issues,” he added.
For wary straphangers, that may take some convincing.
Making matters worse, the MTA will almost certainly have to make its persuasive pitch before there’s widespread availability of an effective vaccine or antiviral treatment.
“We’re going to be appealing to tens of thousands of MTA colleagues and literally millions of customers and making a case,” Foye said.
It’s a tall order.
“I can tell you I would be really scared to get on a subway train [right now],” said Richard Florida, the University of Toronto professor known for his research on cities and the creative class.“That tells me something. I’m a dyed-in-the-wool urbanist.”
Roughly 450,000 New Yorkers are riding the subway system these days. Before the pandemic, daily ridership was 5.5 million. Today’s riders are largely essential workers: the nurses, doctors, grocery store workers and home health care aides without whom New York City could not battle the virus. Many are of modest means with few alternate transportation options.
Those who can work from home are largely doing so, and presumably will continue to do so as long as their employers allow. For a while, as the MTA ramps up to higher levels of service, that should suit it just fine.
But the MTA’s finances are fare dependent, it’s facing financial stress that Ravitch says exceeds that of the 1970s, when New York City almost went bankrupt, and at some point, it will have to proactively drive up ridership for the sake of its own bottom line. That will pose something of a marketing challenge, particularly given the high fatality rate suffered by the New Yorkers most exposed to the system, the MTA’s own workers. As of Friday afternoon, 98had died from the coronavirus.
“What a tragedy that Andy Byford is not leading New York City transit right now,” said Brad Lander, a Councilman from Brooklyn, referring to the former transit chief who clashed with Cuomo and resigned in January. “We just had the system’s best leader in a generation and right at the moment that we need him, [he] is not there.”
As part of its appeal, the MTA will have to convince New Yorkers that the subways are clean. The governor is already planning to close the subway system from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. for the first time in its 24-7 history to more effectively disinfect it and clear out the homeless. But Cuomo cast that as an effort benefiting the essential workers who ride the system right now.
When it’s time to start marketing to those New Yorkers with more commuting choices, the MTA is looking to things like ultraviolet radiation. Such radiation is now used in hospitals for disinfection, Foye said, and scientists are confirming that it is in fact effective against Covid-19. In the meantime, the MTA is experimenting.
“We’ve used UV on a limited number of cars,” Foye said. “There’s a possibility of UV robots down the road. There’s a possibility of UV being installed as original equipment on new rail cars and buses, but that’s not going to happen in the short term.”
One problem with ultraviolet radiation is that its utility vanishes the minute a surface is reexposed to the virus. Hence, the MTA’s experimentation with purportedly longer-lasting antimicrobial products.
The MTA’s challenges are not unique. Major cities around the world are confronting similar issues. Beijing has been using artificial intelligence and handheld scanners to screen the temperatures of some subway passengers. It’s also been requiring passengers book access to particular stations on an app, according to Mohamed Mezghani, the secretary general of the International Association of Public Transport.
Seoul’s metro has announced it will sanitize its vehicles 14 times a day, Mezghani said. Cities are staggering work and school hours to flatten the commuting peak. Milan is marking circles on its subway and bus floors to show riders how to stand at a safe distance from each other. Where they can, systems are trying to increase train and bus frequency to increase capacity and reduce crowding. France and Italy have both mandated social distancing in their transit systems, said Mezghani, though he’s doubtful it’s all that feasible.
“I would say social distancing and mass transportation are not compatible,” he said.
Any longstanding public aversion to mass transit will create problems for the rest of the city.
If New Yorkers turn to individual cars, they will magnify the city’s famous pre-Covid gridlock. Transportation experts worry that New York City will experience the same traffic problems it dealt with after Sept. 11, and then again after Hurricane Sandy, particularly since the MTA’s bid to implement congestion pricing in Manhattan has stalled.
Advocates for greener transportation argue that this pandemic comes with the rare opportunity to reimagine the city’s streetscape, with scores of new protected bike lanes and bus lanes and pedestrian plazas, and stringent high-occupancy vehicle requirements on bridges and tunnels.
Sam Schwartz, the transportation engineer known as Gridlock Sam, says New York City should even build pedestrian bridges between Manhattan and New Jersey.
“Now’s the time to build bicycle, pedestrian bridges, which are being done in London, in Paris, even in Dublin, Ohio, outside of Columbus,” he said.
Following weeks of pressure, City Hall is making some moves in a greener direction. This week, it announced a goal of widening sidewalks, opening up roads to pedestrians and establishing bike lanes along up to 100 miles of streets. There are 6,000 miles of roadway in New York City.
In an interview, New York City Transportation Commissioner Polly Trottenberg suggested there might be more to come.
“I think that’s a bit of a template for what we’re going to need more of on the surface, as we come out of this, obviously, space for folks to be outdoors and maintain some distance,” she said.
But she also warned that there is no Gotham without a working subway and bus system.
“New York City is a city that can only really function with mass transit,” she said.
OTTAWA – Canada’s unemployment rate held steady at 6.5 per cent last month as hiring remained weak across the economy.
Statistics Canada’s labour force survey on Friday said employment rose by a modest 15,000 jobs in October.
Business, building and support services saw the largest gain in employment.
Meanwhile, finance, insurance, real estate, rental and leasing experienced the largest decline.
Many economists see weakness in the job market continuing in the short term, before the Bank of Canada’s interest rate cuts spark a rebound in economic growth next year.
Despite ongoing softness in the labour market, however, strong wage growth has raged on in Canada. Average hourly wages in October grew 4.9 per cent from a year ago, reaching $35.76.
Friday’s report also shed some light on the financial health of households.
According to the agency, 28.8 per cent of Canadians aged 15 or older were living in a household that had difficulty meeting financial needs – like food and housing – in the previous four weeks.
That was down from 33.1 per cent in October 2023 and 35.5 per cent in October 2022, but still above the 20.4 per cent figure recorded in October 2020.
People living in a rented home were more likely to report difficulty meeting financial needs, with nearly four in 10 reporting that was the case.
That compares with just under a quarter of those living in an owned home by a household member.
Immigrants were also more likely to report facing financial strain last month, with about four out of 10 immigrants who landed in the last year doing so.
That compares with about three in 10 more established immigrants and one in four of people born in Canada.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
The Canadian Institute for Health Information says health-care spending in Canada is projected to reach a new high in 2024.
The annual report released Thursday says total health spending is expected to hit $372 billion, or $9,054 per Canadian.
CIHI’s national analysis predicts expenditures will rise by 5.7 per cent in 2024, compared to 4.5 per cent in 2023 and 1.7 per cent in 2022.
This year’s health spending is estimated to represent 12.4 per cent of Canada’s gross domestic product. Excluding two years of the pandemic, it would be the highest ratio in the country’s history.
While it’s not unusual for health expenditures to outpace economic growth, the report says this could be the case for the next several years due to Canada’s growing population and its aging demographic.
Canada’s per capita spending on health care in 2022 was among the highest in the world, but still less than countries such as the United States and Sweden.
The report notes that the Canadian dental and pharmacare plans could push health-care spending even further as more people who previously couldn’t afford these services start using them.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 7, 2024.
Canadian Press health coverage receives support through a partnership with the Canadian Medical Association. CP is solely responsible for this content.
As Canadians wake up to news that Donald Trump will return to the White House, the president-elect’s protectionist stance is casting a spotlight on what effect his second term will have on Canada-U.S. economic ties.
Some Canadian business leaders have expressed worry over Trump’s promise to introduce a universal 10 per cent tariff on all American imports.
A Canadian Chamber of Commerce report released last month suggested those tariffs would shrink the Canadian economy, resulting in around $30 billion per year in economic costs.
More than 77 per cent of Canadian exports go to the U.S.
Canada’s manufacturing sector faces the biggest risk should Trump push forward on imposing broad tariffs, said Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters president and CEO Dennis Darby. He said the sector is the “most trade-exposed” within Canada.
“It’s in the U.S.’s best interest, it’s in our best interest, but most importantly for consumers across North America, that we’re able to trade goods, materials, ingredients, as we have under the trade agreements,” Darby said in an interview.
“It’s a more complex or complicated outcome than it would have been with the Democrats, but we’ve had to deal with this before and we’re going to do our best to deal with it again.”
American economists have also warned Trump’s plan could cause inflation and possibly a recession, which could have ripple effects in Canada.
It’s consumers who will ultimately feel the burden of any inflationary effect caused by broad tariffs, said Darby.
“A tariff tends to raise costs, and it ultimately raises prices, so that’s something that we have to be prepared for,” he said.
“It could tilt production mandates. A tariff makes goods more expensive, but on the same token, it also will make inputs for the U.S. more expensive.”
A report last month by TD economist Marc Ercolao said research shows a full-scale implementation of Trump’s tariff plan could lead to a near-five per cent reduction in Canadian export volumes to the U.S. by early-2027, relative to current baseline forecasts.
Retaliation by Canada would also increase costs for domestic producers, and push import volumes lower in the process.
“Slowing import activity mitigates some of the negative net trade impact on total GDP enough to avoid a technical recession, but still produces a period of extended stagnation through 2025 and 2026,” Ercolao said.
Since the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement came into effect in 2020, trade between Canada and the U.S. has surged by 46 per cent, according to the Toronto Region Board of Trade.
With that deal is up for review in 2026, Canadian Chamber of Commerce president and CEO Candace Laing said the Canadian government “must collaborate effectively with the Trump administration to preserve and strengthen our bilateral economic partnership.”
“With an impressive $3.6 billion in daily trade, Canada and the United States are each other’s closest international partners. The secure and efficient flow of goods and people across our border … remains essential for the economies of both countries,” she said in a statement.
“By resisting tariffs and trade barriers that will only raise prices and hurt consumers in both countries, Canada and the United States can strengthen resilient cross-border supply chains that enhance our shared economic security.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 6, 2024.
