Pandemic update: MTA expands employee temperature testing initiative

Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) last week added 70 locations where employee temperatures are being tested daily, up from seven locations when the program began in March.

More than 3,500 employee temperatures are being checked each day as part of efforts to reduce the spread of the coronavirus. 

The MTA’s Temperature Brigade Program instructs a team of medically trained contract workers and MTA safety and security personnel, fire marshals and fire brigade staff to check the temperature of all employees entering a work location. The employees are tested using contactless thermal scan thermometers on foreheads. 

Anyone with a temperature of 100.4 degrees or higher is sent home and instructed to seek medical guidance and report back to the MTA. 

Temperatures are now checked at 40 New York City Transit subway, four MTA Long Island Rail Road, three MTA Metro-North Railroad and 24 other bus, bridge and police department locations. 

These locations include train service delivery crew reporting facilities, stations, rail-car and right-of-way maintenance facilities, subway control centers and a central operations training location. 

Meanwhile, North American passenger-rail agencies are implementing other measures to limit COVID-19's spread while continuing essential service:

• Amtrak extended suspension of Pennsylvanian and Keystone passenger-rail service until May 18, a local news outlet reported.
• Capital Metropolitan Transportation Authority in Austin, Texas, extended free rail fare through May to allow social distancing at rail-car entrances and at fareboxes. 
• Societe de transport de Montreal is installing 224 touchless hand sanitizer dispensers at 126 rail station entrances and 50 other locations by mid-May.
• Regional Transportation District of Denver is now requiring rail operators to wear face masks and is asking riders to do the same.