Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) Chief Operating Officer Mario Péloquin today appeared on 1010 WINS to discuss the MTA’s update to agency-wide sanitizing protocols as it redoubles safety precautions in response to the novel coronavirus (COVID-19). New York City Transit, MTA Bus Company, Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North are significantly increasing the frequency and intensity of sanitizing procedures at each of its stations, moving to disinfecting efforts twice a day, and continuing its daily cleanings on its fleet of rolling stock with the full fleet of train cars and buses completed every 72 hours or less. The Access-A-Ride dedicated fleet is disinfected daily.

A transcript of the interview appears below.

Susan Richard: Our coronavirus coverage continues on 1010 WINS and joining us live, we've got the Chief Operating Officer for the MTA Mario Péloquin. I hope I'm pronouncing your name correctly.

Mario Péloquin: Yeah, that's pretty good, thank you.

Susan Richard: Okay terrific. Thank you for speaking with us this afternoon. So we heard from Governor Cuomo today that there is going to be a doubling of the cleaning effort for the MTA. Tell us what that means exactly.

Mario Péloquin: So we've decided out of extra caution to start cleaning every station on our entire network. So train stations, subway stations and so on, twice a day as opposed to once a day that we were doing up until yesterday.

Susan Richard: Okay, so when you think of, you know, cleaning in the subway, we don't think of the subways as being particularly clean, right? So how clean is clean and what does that really mean for riders?

Mario Péloquin: We have to make a differentiation. We clean the subway stations and the train stations regularly as part of the routine that we do all the time. Now we started sanitizing the stations, which is a different level because we're not just cleaning now we're sanitizing every station twice a day. So if you think of it this way, every morning, everybody starts with a clean slate, meaning that we've sanitized every station and as they get used throughout the day now we've decided to sanitize them a second time during the day, just to ensure that we do everything that we can to keep everybody as safe as possible on our system.

Susan Richard: And so what parts of the station, we're talking like the turnstiles? What are we talking about?

Mario Péloquin: We call them the touch points. So everything that if you travel through the system, everything that you would touch normally in your regular travels so that the stanchions on the vehicles, buses, or trains, as well as benches, as well as the turnstiles, you know where people put their hands, the keypads for the ticket machines and so on everything that people touch, we sanitize twice a day now.

Susan Richard: So yesterday on the subway, I noticed there were very few people actually hanging onto poles on the trains. And it seemed like no one I mean, no one was actually using the hand rail to get up and down the stairs. So are you guys recommending that or is that an overreaction?

Mario Péloquin: What we do is we recommend that everybody uses common sense. They listen to the advice from the medical professionals, and we hear them give their advice all the time. And people decide what common sense means for them. So if they don't want to hold on to a handrail going down the stairs. That's okay. We're not recommending any of those processes. People decide for themselves, what makes sense and what makes them feel comfortable.

Susan Richard: Is there anything that riders can do? We've heard a lot about, you know, covering your mouth when you cough. What can a rider do on a subway train or a bus?

Mario Péloquin: Well, absolutely, we recommend and everybody recommends things that we should be doing all the time. Proper hygiene, sneeze in your sleeve or a Kleenex and throw that away. Also, wash your hands as often as you can, and don't touch your face, right? Because it is a germ, you can transmit it by touching your face. So we recommend that people just follow good hygiene and as the medical professionals recommend, if you do all those things, you're minimizing the risk that you're gonna contract this disease.

Susan Richard: So not to be overreactive, but is there any scenario under which mass transit might be shut down or reduced?

Mario Péloquin: Our purpose is to move people around safely around the city and the region. And that, that is what we will continue to do. We, you know, we have contingency plans if various things happen, and then we have contingencies for those contingencies. But right now, our plan is to continue providing the service that we're known to provide very, very well for all our commuters. And we will continue to do that.