Last week, Metro had one of its busiest periods on the rails since the pandemic started.
Metro’s Chief Safety Officer Theresa Impastato said she sees things slowly returning to normal in the coming months.
“So I think the level of anxiety has started to crest. I think folks are now returning to a state of optimism as they see a potential return to normalcy on the horizon,” Impastato said.
She’s predicting that riders will start coming back in summer and fall, but masks are still required and the transit agency has plenty of masks to hand out.
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“As it stands right now, we’ve actually distributed over 400,000 masks to customers. And we average about 80,000 masks each month,” Impastato said.
Rail ridership has been steadily growing, according to the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority. WMATA data shows that last week was the first time there were four straight weekdays that 90,000 train trips or more were taken.
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Normal Metro ridership is about 650,000-700,00 trips.
Once crowds return, Impastato said Metro will be watching closely through platform cameras to make sure people can spread out by sending more trains.
“In the event that we find platform crowding or concerns or issues that compromise our customers’ ability to socially distance on the rail system, we can spot in extra trains to create additional capacity,” Impastato said.
To learn more about transit safety with Metro’s Chief Safety Officer Theresa Impastato, register for the NBC4/Telemundo44 Virtual Health and Fitness Expo.
