Preparing For Resumption Of Rail System & Beyond

The Enhanced Community Quarantine (ECG) for Metro Manila may continue or it may be partially lifted on May 16 but, either way, the rule for social distancing will continue to be enforced. This calls for a distance of a least one meter between persons at anytime – in the street, in parks and other open spaces, in hallways and offices, on factory floors, and in work offices.

It will be easy for offices to reconfigure their workspaces to maintain the one-meter distance between people. Construction workers have all the space they need to stay apart. The problem will be in the mass transport system that brings workers to their offices in the morning and then back to their homes in the suburbs in the evening.

We recall how long lines of commuters used to form along streets to main stations such as that on North Avenue in Quezon City, then filled the coaches to standing capacity. The problem was such that it became the subject of an inquiry by a Senate committee.