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Earth Transportation

Coronavirus Causes a Bicycling Boom in New York City (grist.org) 62

An anonymous reader quotes the nonprofit environmental magazine Grist: On Sunday, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio unveiled a new set of guidelines for citizens hoping to help contain the burgeoning outbreak. They included working from home, if possible, avoiding subways during rush hour (a breeding ground for respiratory viruses), and walking or biking to work if possible to avoid crowding on public transportation... Now, less than a week later, it's clear that inexperience and physical impediments weren't enough to keep New Yorkers from adopting a more hygienic, climate-friendly, people-powered form of transportation. The city's Department of Transportation announced on Wednesday that it's seen a 50 percent increase in bike traffic on bridges connecting Manhattan to Brooklyn and Queens compared to last March. New York City's bike share program, Citi Bike, has also seen an enormous upswing in demand. Citi Bike announced on Thursday that rides are up 67 percent compared to a year ago...

[T]he coronavirus pandemic has also caused a 15 percent drop in rush-hour traffic this week compared to the same time last year. That means less pollution for cyclists to choke on and fewer chances of dangerous collisions.

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Coronavirus Causes a Bicycling Boom in New York City

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  • by rossdee ( 243626 ) on Saturday March 14, 2020 @01:46PM (#59830472)

    If you're working from home, why do you even need a bicycle.

    (But I can see Peleton becoming more popular

  • by MrL0G1C ( 867445 ) on Saturday March 14, 2020 @01:57PM (#59830504) Journal

    A chart to show the relentless spread of covid-19 over the last couple of weeks in a bunch of countries.

    https://snipboard.io/IOzDFm.jp... [snipboard.io]
    Being Logarithmic it shows how it's been increasing is spread at almost the same rate in the countries selected. Data from: https://www.worldometers.info/... [worldometers.info]

    People should know that this virus is airborne, it can stick around in air for as long as 3 hours, link: https://thehill.com/policy/hea... [thehill.com]

    Another study found that a passenger got on a bus 30 minutes after infected passengers got off and still caught the virus:
    https://mustsharenews.com/covi... [mustsharenews.com]

    Many people don't know how essential vitamin D is to the immune system:
    https://www.pharmacytimes.com/... [pharmacytimes.com]

    This virus infects most people before the symptoms occur in the infectors so waiting for symptoms to occur is not a good strategy:
    https://www.theguardian.com/sc... [theguardian.com]

    • The virus can be artificially suspended in an aerosol and not die for three hours. There was no ultraviolet light like sunlight involved. The test was only run for three hours. It’s not clear that coughing or breathing creates enough aerosol with enough virus for it to be a plausible way to contract it in real circumstances. At this point I’d put the aerosolized spread at a maybe. Even the authors only say it’s plausible by extrapolating from another Coronavirus [medrxiv.org]
      • by MrL0G1C ( 867445 )

        See this study too:
        https://mustsharenews.com/covi... [mustsharenews.com]

        Passenger 1 infected gets on bus, gets off bus. bus surfaces cleaned.
        Half hour later, passenger 2 gets on, catches the infection - 4.5m away form where the infected passenger was, didn't go to the same part of the bus, the air carried the infection and it stayed in the air for 30 mins.

        This virus spreads 10-fold every 8 days, it'll infect the whole worlds population within weeks if we don't take drastic measures soon, those measures are quarantine / social

        • That was https://www.scmp.com/news/chin... [slashdot.org] >redacted soon after publication bro. I do my research. Still a maybe.
        • That was retracted without reason [scmp.com] bro. I do my research. It’s a maybe and needs review.
          • by MrL0G1C ( 867445 )

            The other paper on the subject which came to the same conclusion via lab tests is awaiting peer review.
            https://thehill.com/policy/hea... [thehill.com]

            The simple fact is this virus is obviously extremely contagious.

            Here in the UK we're not very huggy kissy and the virus is spreading just as fast as countries like France or Italy, I think that is due to it's highly airborne nature.

            At the end of the day I think the only way to stop the spread of the virus is by stopping the social interactions IE quarantine. Although S' Kor

            • The hill references the paper I linked. Instead of reading some authors opinion I tend to read the actual paper instead. It cuts out lots of clickbait. The authors don’t claim it’s transmitted by aerosol, but that it’s plausible because it shares similarities with another SARS virus. If the authors give it a maybe, then so do I until more information is available.
              • by MrL0G1C ( 867445 )

                Looking at the 2020-03-09 pdf. They did do testing, see method on lines 67 onwards and results from 96 onwards. There's a lot of scientific jargon there, I'm not qualified to judge the quality of the science here but they did do aerosol testing and said the aerosols were 'viable' at 3 hours.
                https://www.medrxiv.org/conten... [medrxiv.org]

                Whilst I haven't heard of anyone contracting COVID-19 from public transport other than that one bus, I also haven't gotten info on how the other 145000 people contracted the disease so t

                • We don’t know how much virus gets into aerosol in actual human cases. We don’t know how much virus it takes to actually infect someone on average. We don’t know how well the virus survives in an aerosol in real conditions such as varying temperatures and with thinks like UV light from sunlight. We only know if you put massive amounts into an aerosol artificially, it remains viable after three hours for the given test run but the test was ended after three hours so it may actually remain
        • The bus case is quite interesting. But the article you linked to does not claim that the bus was cleaned and also does not explain how transmission via fomites was ruled out. The map of the bus suggests that the covid carrier could have contaminated the metal rods near the door in the middle. Only passengers leaving through that door got infected.

          The amount of air ventilation in public transport would flush out most airborne virus particles in much less time than half an hour I can't find numbers for buses

          • by MrL0G1C ( 867445 )

            The 2 different passengers did not use the same part of the bus, there was 4.5m between where they were.

            The is also the paper awaiting peer review, I'm no expert but it looks like they were thorough, they say the virus can stay alive airborne for up to 3 hours and for 3 days on some surfaces.

            • It's highly possible that all passengers all used the same exit in the back and that the infected ones touched the handrail near that exit.

              • by MrL0G1C ( 867445 )

                They didn't, cameras were checked. The 2 passengers did not use the same part of the bus.

                • So they ruled out every other person who rode that bus for one to three days and determined this? It stays on surfaces a long time. I think that’s a possible why the paper was withdrawn. It was taken down so quickly I couldn’t trace back to the original.
    • Look here [pedestrian...ations.com] for an expert view on coronavirus and public transit. In short: Asian countries, which are the countries dealing most effectively with coronavirus, do not thing public transit is more of a risk than other public facilities such as offices.

      • by MrL0G1C ( 867445 )

        That's like a blog and he's quoting old info by Maria Ma which is basically wrong, She hypothesises too much and is misleading about one thing - most infections occur before the person infecting is symptomatic. She hints otherwise.

        https://www.theguardian.com/sc... [theguardian.com]
        "In the Singapore cluster, between 45% and 84% of infections appeared to come from people incubating the virus. In China, the figures ranged from 65% to as much as 87%."

        I wouldn't want to get on public transport in the UK where testing has been ina

  • [The city's DoT says it's seen a 50 percent increase in bike traffic on bridges compared to last March. Citi Bike [bike sharing] says rides are up 67% vs. last year]

    They're still taking a big chance.

    Yes, biking is better than being in a can, elbow-to-elbow, with other commuters. But biking is no protection if you happen to inhale a floating droplet from where some other biker or hiker sneezed within the last two hours. And ride-sharing using a bike that's been used in the last several days by a victim m

    • by MrL0G1C ( 867445 )

      Until people start to isolate the virus pretty much spreads everywhere at the same rate. https://snipboard.io/IOzDFm.jp... [snipboard.io]

      The math is simple, you more people you interact with the higher your chance of catching the disease. The more people you interact with the more people that will catch the disease from you. The only way to avoid spreading or catching COVID-19 is to isolate.

      Covid took 8 days to go from 100 cases in the US to 1000 cases in the US, that is a shocking rate of spread, but it's no different fr

    • by burtosis ( 1124179 ) on Saturday March 14, 2020 @03:35PM (#59830736)
      So many people are needing testing and being turned away. My wife is a doctor and on a covid group there was a report of a person who got a CT scan for unrelated reasons but the technicians saw the characteristics of covid-19 infection and put it on the results as a possibility. This was to protect the doctors and patients around that individual as much as the patient. They got a call back in 15 minutes from senior management of the hospital demanding they remove it from the chart and they refused (being an independent testing lab). The lack of testing is being suppressed on so many levels, if we were following south Korea’s example, given our population, we would be doing 750-1200 times the current amount of testing. We are literally three orders of magnitude off and once we do real testing America is likely in for a shock.
      • by MrL0G1C ( 867445 )

        Brexit has given us a strange blessing, tourists stayed away due to VISA and travel uncertainties, I'm pretty sure if it wasn't for the whole brexit debacle then more people would have visited the UK and we'd be where Italy is now.

        I seriously hope the gov't uses the time we've been given to enact proper measures to slow the virus.

        I mentioned to a senior nurse that I thought the NHS would be in real trouble in two weeks, she said it's in trouble now :-(

        China enacted quarantine when only 571 people where know

      • South Korea dealt with a large outbreak of MERS [wikipedia.org] in 2015, and a smaller one in 2018. So this is old hat for them. They've actually already had two practice runs at this to iron out any problems. Most other countries, including the U.S. and Europe, are undergoing trial by fire. This is their first time doing this "for real" in recent memory, and they're scrambling to fix response problems as they show up (or not fixing them and trying to suppress news about their failure to cover their butts).
    • Yes a recent paper reported finding detectable airborne virus for some time, but that's far from showing significant transmission risk. I think being worried about breathing in other cyclists' exhalation borders on hysteria. Note sitting on a bike isn't magical, the risk factor is breathing, which you have to do anyway and whose risk, even if finite, is small, otherwise we'd be seeing measles levels of transmission.

      There is a significant chance you are going to get this thing by hand to face transmission so

      • worried about breathing

        Clear breathing is a very big risk.

        I should stop right now it I was you!

      • Yes a recent paper reported finding detectable airborne virus for some time, but that's far from showing significant transmission risk.

        And two other recent papers showed:
        - A transmission in a bus from several seats away with no contact.
        - A transmission in a bus from a passenger who'd gotten off to one that got on half an hour later.

        Not that it matters. Given the documented infectivity of the virus if it gets into the eye, nose, or lungs, the discovery that sneeze particles with live virus f

      • the risk factor is breathing, which you have to do anyway and whose risk, even if finite, is small,

        Where'd you get the idea the risk of airborne transmission was small? The last I saw they were thinking it's the major mode of transmission, and probably why it escaped the quarantine efforts.

        At first the advice was wash-wash-wash, because many similar viruses were transmitted mainly by large droplets (which rapidly fall from the air) and contact. But then they discovered this one is transmitted by airborne

        • I have yet to see any expert advice to the effect that airborne transmission is a major risk. Note that "airborne" specifically means by suspended aerosol droplets. Someone can cough on you from two meters away and that's not "airborne".

          The distinction is relevant to the scenario we're talking about here.

    • I'd take those counts with a grain of salt. Even under the best circumstances when testing thousands per day like in Korea or Italy you'll never have an actual count of infected in the population. It's more a reflection of how many and which people are tested.

      Still, public transport has to be like the best possible place to get infected, what with hundreds of people stuck together in an enclosed space, breathing onto each other and touching the handrails with corona-infested hands. But no government in a pl

    • is a recipe for turning NYC into a pesthole.

      In other words, no change.

  • and fewer chances of dangerous collisions.

    Car drivers are subjected to a degree of testing (at least where I live), Cyclists have he right to be bat-shit crazy, and most of them seem keen to exercise this right in front of fast moving mechanical contrivances.

    At the present odds, people in the under 50's age group are more likely to die from "mad cyclist disease" than from Corona virus.

    • by Kjella ( 173770 )

      People who wouldn't normally get on a bike but used the Corona virus as an excuse to get their butt off the couch probably aren't in the spandex daredevil league. It's the racer wannabes who are using their commute as lap times that do most the crazy maneuvers I see to shave a few seconds off their time and they're already out there.

  • This will work (Score:1, Interesting)

    by dave-man ( 119245 )

    until it rains.

  • by tsa ( 15680 )

    It's nice to read articles like this one. The virus also does positive things. Let's hope many of the people who took to riding the bike because of it keep using the bike after the crisis is over. It's good for them and for the environment.

  • If you're healthy enough to ride to work you don't have to worry about coronavirus. It's not going to be a big deal for you.

    If we were the America of old, we'd be taking advantage of the one way we have to grant immunity to create an army of critical personnel who are immune and can work without fear of catching or spreading it. Open exposure camps for healthy young volunteers in critical professions. Pay extra to go to them, and guarantee them extra pay in the near future as they serve in their professions

  • I cycle to work most days but if it is raining I usually catch the bus. Last few weeks I have cycled in the rain to avoid being on the bus.
  • I'm watching all these folks cycling or rushing to work. I head for the fridge and do my 3 sets, y'know, refrigerator door pull, get the tacos, refrigerator door pull, get the salsa, then 1 more pull, start working on that 6 pack. Not the corona but the Corona Light

    The wrist curls, you've seen the Chris Pratt videos on YT.

    Reach for the remote. Lift that couch. Got a little sweat going. You know the rest.

  • Respirate and sweat more, continue to commute, take longer to do so, and clog up traffic even worse than normal.
    That's what we need.

    Typical NYC asshole behavior.

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