California intercity, commuter, and transit rail operations have begun adjusting to the state’s shelter-in-place order issued Thursday night by Gov. Gavin Newsom as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. More changes can be expected.
Here’s what has been announced as of Friday morning:
— Bay Area Rapid Transit will cut its hours of service beginning Monday, March 23, reducing weekday operation from the current 5 a.m.-midnight schedule to 5 a.m. to 9 p.m. As of March 28, Saturday and Sunday service will be cut to 8 a.m. to 9 p.m.; currently, Saturday service is 6 a.m.-midnight and Sunday operations are 8 a.m.-midnight.
— San Diego’s Coaster will cut from 11 to six weekday round trips beginning Monday, and suspend weekend service beginning March 28. The new weekday schedule is here.
— Amtrak’s Pacific Surfliner says on its website that it plans to move to a reduced schedule on Monday, but cautions “this is a dynamic situation, so adjustments could happen sooner.”
— Amtrak’s San Joaquins have not yet announced any rail changes, but are suspending the Emeryville and San Francisco Thruway bus service as of Saturday, March 21.
— LA Metro and Metrolink have not yet announced any service changes. San Diego’s Metropolitan Transit System light rail currently says it will maintain regular schedules through March 31. Santa Clara’s Valley Transportation authority has announced some changes to bus operations, but none for light rail. No adjustments from previous cuts have been announced by Caltrain, Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transi, Altamont Corridor Express, or Amtrak’s Capitol Corridor.
CHARLES, your (and others) cynicism and downright nastiness toward others that you apparently think are beneath you is particularly distasteful at this moment. You might need to be treated for diarrhea of the mouth. As for this particular venue, it is supposed to be civil. Sadly, it no longer is. It seems to be bringing out the worst in some people.
Mr Gerald McFarlane. People get pneumonia from the common cold. EBOLA is not a corona virus. Ebola is a hemorrhagic fever.
Time will tell when things get better. Right now people are panicked. This morning when my daughter in law was dropped off at work, she works at a grocery store, people were lined up at the door. The store hasn’t been able to keep meats, toilet paper or milk on the shelves. My community has not had any cases, yet, and the nearest case(singular) was 40 miles away in the next state.
I am not sure what to say. I will say this:
People just calm down. This is not the end of the world.
Thank you for your attention
Having recently returned from the UK, I can tell you what I seen is probably heading our way. I think regardless of political siding we should be giving our leaders the benefit of the doubt that they are trying to do the right thing for all of us, there is nobody alive today to give us first hand knowledge of the last pandemic in the early 1900’s.
AND be civil to each other and relax, we will get through this.
ALL – C’mon people! We’re all educated and intelligent people on this forum! We have, obviously, two different measures talking past each other. Yes we have an extraordinarily unhealthy population in USA. We also have excellent health care.
Look around you! Overweight people smoking, getting no exercise, eating garbage from the drive-through more days than not, drinking a six-pack. A stereotype but it describes a whole lot of us.
The other stereotype we have is the homeless junkie living under the freeway viaduct. Will that person get the same medical care I get? Of course not. But that doesn’t change the fact that when/ if I need care nothing in the world matches what I do/ will get.
When the virus rages through the Rikers Island prison in Bronx New York, the inmates will die. When the virus rages through my suburban neighborhood near TRAINS-MAG offices, my neighbors and I will be fine. Like it or hate it, that’s the reality we have to deal with. In the 1930’s and the 1940’s, countless millions innocents were slaughtered or died of Stalin’s manufactured starvation, countless atrocities. Get a grip people. This virus isn’t the worst thing that’s happened in this world. For the politicians to have wrecked our economy over it is inexcusable.
Charles the Illinois Governor is not closing down gas stations. You’re welcome to stroll through are fine State though and contemplate other conspiracies. https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/pritzker-promises-essential-services-will-not-close-amid-coronavirus-pandemic/2240578/
Charles, While it is a disease that is similar to other viruses, there is NO vaccine for it and it is much more vigorous in spreading. It can overwhelm the medical systems ability to treat those that need care. It is reminiscent of the “Spanish flu” epidemic of the 1918’s. You can phu phu it but by doing so, you atr part of the problem.
JFT, the true mortality rate may never be known. I’d trust the numbers reported by China like I trust bridge salesmen. Some have or will get it and not know and not report their illness which will skew the denominator and overall rate higher. SARS, MERS, H1N1, and ebola were all “potential extinction events,” when they were discovered, too. Prudent measures slowed progression and treatments were discovered. Have a little faith.
JFT – What did I say that wasn’t true? It’s a disease slightly more deadly than the flu we get every year.
JAMES – I do know someone who has it, a man in the target group of severity per his age. He had some nausea, has a persistent mild headache, and a body temperature below 96 degrees. But for the fact he’s in quarantine he’d be up to his usual schedule of activities. (Except all his activities are shut down.)
We’ve had infectious diseases all along and we never shut the country down! I don’t know what was worse than polio (pre Salk and pre Sabin). Maybe some schools were shut for a while but by and large the country kept going. I was around for the polio epedemic (right at the target age) before the vaccines, I’ve had several viral diseases (mumps, measles, colds, flu, but not German Measles), and I’m still alive.
Most of the severe morbidiity so far have been smokers, vapers, and people with pre-existing conditions. Anyone sick is soemthing to be sad about but not a reason for panic.
The ones most at risk are elderly and those with chronic health problems. Most people who have it don’t even know it. This is total insanity and panic mode. I, personally, know of no one who has it.
JF The OECD ratings refer to life expectancy. It is a known fact that Mediterranean cultures generally have a higher life expectancy due to diet and other cultural factors. I didn’t see anything on their website about the quality of their health care system. I learned one thing in my two semesters of statistics in college “you can make statistics say whatever you want them to”.
” over a disease slightly more deadly than the other diseases we’ve lived with all along”
There, you just lost the little credibility you had left.
You may change your tone when you start losing relatives (that is, if there’s anyone you care about).
And we should all remember that, public or private, transportation companies: air, rail, etc., have their own best interests at heart….private..shareholders, stock price, management entrenched; public: political constituency, bureaucracy. Both exhibit congruent behaviors in a situation such as this crisis. Best the myriad problems be solved over finger pointing; time later for that.
BRETT – The nincompoops aren’t the ones you say, it’s the opposite, it’s the politicians who have tried to shut down the country over a disease slightly more deadly than the other diseases we’ve lived with all along. Shutting down America won’t stop this virus. It will slow it down to a point, to the point where were gear up with hospital beds and treatments. We’re almost at that point. So it’s time to start to get back to normal.
America needs food, water, electricity, sewerage treatment, electricity, telecom, and all manner of medical care virus or otherwise, plus care and keeping of those in institutions or prisons. Food and medicine and hospital respirators all need to be transported by rail and by truck. So you can’t shut down America. People need to go to work to provide all those products and services or we’d starve.
Plus I have an urgent neerd to travel for personal reasons, which means traverl through Illinois where the idiot governor threatens to close the gas stations. What am I supposed to do, walk? Can’t do that because there’s no place to eat along the way.
By that time, the virus could spread more, It should be immediate. No one is taking this serious, been almost 2 months, now you wanna cut service to avoid the spread? The Governor of Florida still hasn’t ordered beach closures, what nincumpoops we have in charge.
Sorry Charles, Gerald, but here’s the OECD health care system ratings list. Italy 4/40; USA 28/40 . Certainly not the best in the World, but still very expensive to run.
http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/topics/health/
No less than 20% of all infected patients require hospitalization, many in intensive care. That’s hardly just a harder-than usual flu. In the meantime, the infected population is growing exponentially, roughly doubling every 3 days. Prepare for your hospitals, as good as they are, to be overrun, the tsunami is coming fast. And health care administrators know it, this is why harsh measures are being put in place.
Three weeks from now, you may speak different. And the whole country may be locked-up because too little came too late. Just as it happened in Italy and Spain.
Charles, you might think I’m a liberal, but technically I look at each issue on it’s own merits…so depending on the subject I could be called conservative, centrist or liberal…I’ve learned there is no one answer to all the issues.
Just heard on the radio today that the Mayor and Chief of Police are warning people to follow the Shelter-in-Place order or more serious consequences will start being used. Last I checked, a Shelter-in-Place is a civil recommendation and not an act of law, if someone wants to tell me under what laws they’re going to use to site and or fine people.
How are these cut backs going to affect Amtrak or any of the commuter/transit systems? Let’s see if service returns to prior levels after this is relatively over and things are “back to normal”? As for systems like NJT and the NYTA asking for bailouts, why shouldn’t the transit systems get bailouts just like every other industry in the U.S., they’er experiencing the same loss of business and income as say American Airlines or United or Boeing, and without those transit services the workers for those companies couldn’t get to work once they start going back to work. So now is the time to just get all this over with and start these massive infrastructure expenditures people have been asking for: Gateway, Portal, etc., etc.,
CURTIS – To your point, the cuts to AMTK, we are down to two R/T per day, one Hiawatha R/T and the Empire Builder open to local traffic. Wasn’t it just a week ago we were talking about ADDING trips to the Hiawatha? Not good. Yup, CURTIS, you’re right, there’s an impact to AMTK and it’s not good.
JF – Gerald is a liberal and I’m a conservative and we agree on this subject.
GERALD – The count is now three! This is the third time you and I have agreed! The Millenium! Next to happen is Jesus’ return!
JF -You say that Italy has way better health care than USA? You must be joking. From what I know I’d rate USA health care as the best in the world, Italy’s is at best average.
Some commentators have blamed Italy’s problem on workers from Wuhan coming back from holiday to luxury garment factories in the Lombardy region. Neither China nor Italy acted to suspend the travel, according to these pundits.
Ok so NJ Transit is askin for help , AGAIN. $4 B!! That’s related RR topic stuff, nothing new with NJT
Ok so why do you think the NYC Mass transit area have the most cases? Look at the Mass transit map and look at the infected area map, overlap them, Im not a smart man!
It is unfortunate that most comments are off-topic. An informed discussion should focus on the ramifications of the massive cuts to rail.
In the two weeks time of shelter in place, the sick infected people will show up at the hospitals, but in their past two weeks, they had not infected dozen of friends or fellow workers. The hospitals can then handle and identify where the virus is located and track down any others that they had been in contact with.
I like the idea of using the Cruise ships but only for un-infected patients of all the area hospital bed ridden patients that are recovering on land. Then that will open the hospital for only virus patients. Family member of recovering patients can join them on the Cruise ships and enjoy the services on the un-infected Cruise or Hospital ships. We could use a Cruise ship at most eastern costal cities and West Coast ports. Our population is along the coast or Great Lakes cities..
We need to get rid of Newsom, this is completely stupid, for those that think this is slightly more deadly than the flu, it’s not, it’s actually less deadly than the flu, it’s only more deadly to those over 70 and those with the underlying conditions already mentioned. The vast majority of the population(worldwide) would never even know they had the virus as 80% of people don’t have any sypmtoms or just have mild symptoms.
Those that have recovered from having it also haven’t gotten it again, because their bodies built up an immunity, just like our bodies do to most viruses if we let them run their course. To put this in perspective with other members of the coronavirus family: EBOLA(50% mortality), MERS(35% mortality), SARS(10% mortality) and the common cold(0% mortality, as far as I know there hasn’t been anyone that died from a cold).
The only people that would need hospitalization are those in the target groups, elderly and those with underlying health conditions that are more susceptible to this. You don’t need to hospitalize the rest of the population, let alone treat them. I personally do not want to have to be dealing with this a year or two or three from now, but that’s what you’re going to get by doing this “social distancing”(which is an oxymoron by the way) and sheltering-in-place to try and slow it’s spread. Use some common sense, isolate those most in danger and let the rest of us act normally.
Right now, this stupidity is doing to the U.S. what China could never have done in a million years.
Wow, isn’t it wonderful when angry conservative men all unite together and claim they know better than public health professionals worldwide? Why not apply for their job if you know more than they do? (Hint: you don’t)
Btw: 627 people died from this thing yesterday in Italy alone, and this is in spite aggressive confinement measure and a health care system that is way superior to American’s.
Sorry, but I have to agree with those who “poo poo” the severity of this disease. Let’s put this in perspective. If all the governments in the world conspired together, pulled back, and said just let this thing run it’s course, at current rate we would lose 3.5% of the population – that is 245 million people worldwide. But if you look at the pandemic of 1918, the estimate is about the same 3.5-4.0% The only difference between then and now is that people had the fortitude to continue on instead of shutting down the entire planet.
Yes, the Coronavirus is deadly- but not for the majority of the population. This whole thing has been blown waaaaay out of proportion by our leadership and the news media.