From top to bottom the COVID-19 pandemic has overwhelmed New York's public transportation system and its staff.
The crisis is a cautionary tale to other cities trying to keep a workforce safe when employees interact with each other and members of the public in close proximity while providing a public service to all, even highly vulnerable populations.
“I lost my best friend, and I do not feel like they are doing enough,” Marcia Patoir, Patrick's wife, told ABC News Thursday. She and her daughter described Patoir as a fisherman, a beer connoisseur and someone who loved cooking and playing with his grandchildren. NYPD officers wake up sleeping passengers and direct them to the exits at the 207th Street A-train station, April 30, 2020, in the Manhattan borough of New York.
"Drivers, operators, conductors -- they are very much in the thick of it and in the midst of so many people, they are on the front line and are very exposed," Paul Skoutelas, president and CEO of the American Public Transportation Association, told ABC News by phone."I do think the agencies across the board are doing everything they can to protect them."
"For way too long it was business as usual. We were told we were essential workers and that was that -- just keeping working," he continued."It should not have taken whistleblowers. ... Changes have only come now after too many people got sick and pictures of the state of train care shocked people."An MTA transit worker cleans a nearly empty Times Square-42nd Street subway station following the outbreak of novel coronavirus, in New York City, March 16, 2020.
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