Keeping Roaches at Bay on Buses
Thursday, September 24, 2009 4:39 PM
The next time you're tempted to sneak a Starbucks on board a bus or furtively snack on a food bar while leaving work on a Park & Ride bus, consider this: Food crumbs and spilled drinks attract roaches.
Let's help keep METRO's buses and trains clean by following our rule of no food or drink on-board.
Pity the New Yorkers who commute on NYC Transit buses. Roaches have invaded city buses, and it's the high season for the repulsive creatures.
Although the buses are swept nightly and floor, windows, seats and exteriors periodically washed, the shortage of bus cleaners at the Big Apple's MetropolitanTransit Authority has strained the cleaning staff. The agency said it has hired an entomologist to improve its extermination process and will hire 40 new bus cleaners. Read more here.
Here at METRO, our buses are cleaned nightly. Click here to watch a documentary on what happens to our buses at night when most of you are asleep. "We have budgeted 159 cleaners for our buses and eight for our 18 trains," says Gwen Johnson, a marketing spokesperson for operations. "Our buses may have 10 people at a time working on it. Cleaners will get on it to clean it while it's in the fuel line."
Every night, the buses are swept and wiped down. On a rotational basis, they are soaped down and washed by our automatic bus wash. Less than every 30 days, they go through maintenance, including detailing.
"METRO is very environmentally friendly, and we're are on a rotation to clean exteriors. If mud or oil are on the buses, we will clean it immediately," says Johnson.
And as far as cockroaches go?
"We have a proactive program for roach problems. That's not to say you're not going to get a fly or bug. This is Houston. But we're not getting complaints about roaches," says Johnson.
Johnson, who stayed up all night to watch what happens to buses during the taping of our documentary, says the routine is amazing.
"By 3 a.m., all the buses have been fueled and cleaned and checked and ready to go out. By 4 a.m.,operators are coming in for their pre-trip inspection," says Johnson. "They're very serious about what they do - they've very focused because the cleaners have only so much time to do a lot of work."