The New Yorker Radio Hour - Driving Through the Pandemic

Episode Date: October 27, 2020

It feels like a lifetime since the coronavirus pandemic transformed Americans’ daily lives, seven months ago, and fatigue is setting in even as the disease ravages new regions. The staff writer Jennifer Gonnerman talked with one of the people who has a unique perspective on those terrifying first weeks when the world seemed to be ending. Terence Layne is a bus operator for New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority and a chief shop steward for the Transport Workers Union. The city’s transit workers were among the hardest hit of all essential workers, and over a hundred and twenty M.T.A. employees have died from the virus. Yet Layne kept showing up for his shift, day after day, even as the city streets went quiet.  Jennifer Gonnerman wrote about Terence Layne in the August 31, 2020, issue of the magazine. New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. The coronavirus is hitting yet another peak. Cases are rising in so many parts of the country, and Europe is also battling a resurgence. The last seven months have lasted half a lifetime, and yet it feels like the pandemic is beginning all over again. Staff writer Jennifer Gahneman talked recently with one of the people who, witnessed this whole tragic episode in our history up close. His name is Terrence Lane, a bus operator in New York City. Now, transit employees were among the hardest hit of all essential workers in New York. More than 120 have died from COVID. And yet all the same,

Terence Lane kept showing up for his shift, day after day, even as the city streets went quiet. So we just passed the museum of natural history at 79th and Central Park West, you know, with that eyesore in the front that statue of Teddy Roosevelt with the Native American and the African walking alongside him, you know, that's New York City's version of the Confederacy or a Confederate symbol. And people, you know, want to insist that that's not a symbol of white supremacy, but I don't, if that's not a symbol of white supremacy, I don't know what it is. In September as the weather began to cool, Lane talked to us while riding on one of his regular routes on the west side of Manhattan.

You know, but you would see activity in front of the museum. In March, nothing. Museum is closed, it's empty, you know, just a feeling of desolation, almost apocalyptic in nature where there's, you know, like something happened and chased every door. everybody out of the city. Terrence Lane is a longtime bus operator in New York City, 21 years on the job. When I met him this past spring, he was working out of the Manhattanville Bus Depot, which is a bus depot on the west side of Harlem, and he's the chief shop steward there for his union, local 100. The first time I saw Terrence Lane was actually in a video that I saw on the website for the union,

and it was a video he had also posted on a few Facebook groups for city transit workers. The morning, brothers and sisters. I just want to share a few thoughts with you this morning. He recorded this video when he was on a layover on March 23rd. He had propped up his phone in the window of the bus facing himself, and he was giving a sort of two, three-minute speech to his colleagues, his coworkers, really trying to rally the troops. However, we just have to reconcile ourselves to the fact that sometimes the only recognition

you're going to receive is from the woman and man reflected back to you in the mirror, as you are preparing for work to enter into this virtual hot zone. And know that that person's staring back at you is a human being with guts and moxie and courage and dignity and self-respect. And sometimes that recognition is just going to have to be enough. But if no one else thinks you and no one else recognize you, know that I do. I always felt like New York City's transit workers don't get nearly the amount of attention or recognition or really appreciation that they deserve. I mean, in a lot of ways, the subways and the buses are really the lifeblood of New York City.

You know, he saw it all. In March, he had passengers coughing in the back of the bus. You know, he saw the stress on their faces as people were losing their jobs, getting more and more frustrated. You know, the worst of the pandemic as it was impacting people's daily lives. Please exit from the rear door. Yeah, it was a pretty macabre experience. One day, you know, it was almost overnight. One day you're going from full ridership to operating buses that are empty.

Especially in mid-March, after the pause orders began, you may go the whole route. It may not pick up more than 15 or 20 people, the entire route. As we reached the apex or the high point, the most critical point of the pandemic, and people were out of work after a few weeks, food pantries that weren't unusual. What became unusual was the lines. The lines of people became longer, far longer than they used to be. They were wrapping themselves around the block. What was it like for you personally to be operating a bus during the lockdown when so many other workers in New York City were obviously staying home and some had left the city altogether?

What was it like for you to be driving a bus? What were you seeing? What was the experience like? You know, we had never operated in a hot zone before. We had never operated through this kind of plague. And so the steps and measures that we needed to take us to take in order to protect. protect ourselves, that became a job. You know, you had to watch everything you touch, and we were wearing gloves, and we were wearing

masks, and we were disrobing before we entered our homes, just traveling to and from work, and doing our jobs became tantamount to being in a war zone. and even as you you, even as you forge your head, you're seeing some of your fellow coworkers, you're seeing your coworkers, some of them fall to this disease. And we didn't feel that the senior management had done enough to protect us.

What Lane is talking about here is the fact that in early March, his employer, the MTA, prohibited transit workers from wearing masks on the job. We asked for masks, they said no. When we asked or said that we wanted to wear our own mask, they told us that we couldn't do that. Because the mask was not part of the uniform that goes along with the title, which we thought was absurd. It's worth noting that at this point in early March, the CDC was not recommending that healthy people wear masks. But some of the city's transit workers wanted to wear masks and they were terrified.

Their union local 100 pushed back and the MTA reversed course pretty quickly. But it was not until late March that they announced they were going to start supplying PPE to their workers. And by the time that actually happened, some transit workers had already died. We felt that we were relegated to being

the proverbial canary in a coal mine. And we are still pretty furious about that. At this point, how many people do you think you know who died of COVID-19? I don't know if I had to make a guess. You know, I've been reluctant to actually sit down and try to count, but 30, 30 people. Between the end of March and early June, so over about 10 weeks, over 120 New York City transit workers died of COVID. That was a significantly higher number than other city agencies than firefighters, for example.

or the city's police officers. We just crossed 135th. Besides us, there were only three customers on the bus. This is very unusual. This is mid-morning on a Saturday. If all the stores were open and if everything was operating as it was pre-COVID, there would be quite a few people on this bus.

At the height of the pandemic, those of us who were still out here were essential workers. We had to be out here. And so there was a feeling of camaraderie among those of us who had to be out here and an understanding that what we were doing was vital

and we were supportive of one another when the city began to reopen and non-essential people or workers began to come back into the system things began to change and there were those of course who

thought that treating mistreating a bus operator is perfectly appropriate. And so the assaults resumed. The mistreatment, the spitting and the assaulting. And then of course, some of these folks, if you ask them to wear a mask, they felt that that was a reason for them to become violent. So, you know, bus operators have to deal with tremendous amount of stress. You know, they're dealing with road rage and angry motorists. It seemed like every longtime bus operator had stories of abuse they had endured on the job. and Lane himself has stories like this. Yes, very early on in my career.

In fact, after I had completed probation, I was attacked outside, right outside the front of my depot, Amsterdam Depot, by a motorist who had asked to move his car from the front of a bus stop so that I could safely alight an elderly woman. He took Umbrage with my request and came out of his car with that anti-theft device called the club, which is a huge steel bar,

and, you know, approach me and attack me with it. And while I was able to prevail physically in that encounter, that kind of set the tone for what my expectations should be from that point. Now, if you think that you can assault a New York City Transit bus operator right in front of his depot, with supervisors and other bus operators, standing around, if you think that that's okay, you can imagine what some other people may think it's okay. And so we're slowly but surely getting back to how things were before the pandemic came on.

Bus operators are protected by New York State law. Consulting a bus operator is a family. We're listening to Terrence Lane, a bus driver in New York City, speaking with Jennifer Gonerman. More in a moment. During the very worst days of the pandemic, I know as the chief shop steward at depot, you had a lot of responsibilities. Tell me about what your, what sort of tasks you were performing back then. My assignments changed slightly. I would operate a bus in a morning. I would operate the M96. And then in the afternoon, I would take the sick list, which is the list of my brothers and sisters who had called out sick. And I would take that list. And I would take that list. and I would check in and call and try to contact each member on that list just to get some information about their condition

and what kind of assistance we could render. And I would do that up until 6, 7 o'clock in the evening. And what were your coworkers telling you on the telephone when you reached them? Well, some of them had been exposed. Others were experiencing symptoms, shortness of breath. and this very dry, raspy cough. They couldn't get out a few words without this cough. Some of them were in pain.

And some of them were so scared of the hospitals and of the urgent care centers, they were too scared to go and get medical attention. They were scared that they would enter the hospital for treatment and not ever come back out. And there were a couple of them that I had to call. hoax and plead with to at least go to an urgent care. You know, it was harrowing.

And this was after my own father, my own father had passed on the 31st of March. Tell us a little bit about your father. What was he like? He was a vibrant man. He loved life. I'm professional jazz musician. And the thing about this disease is that, he appeared to be overcoming it.

And then all of a sudden, it just took a turn for the worse. And I didn't know that when he went into Harlem Hospital on the 24th, we didn't know that we'd never see him again. And we were only able to speak to him because a very kind nurse, the day before he passed, held his phone. to his ear so that we could talk to him, but at that point, he wasn't even able to respond. And my case is not unique. There are quite a few of us in Manhattanville Depot who have lost parents and loved ones,

but especially parents and grandparents. And anyway, yeah. We're in Midtown. We're at Central Park South, and we're entering Columbus Circle to go on a northbound trip back up to Harlem. We're right outside the Time Warner Center. It's still weird because look how empty it is now. This is Saturday morning. Normally around this time of the year, it would be full of tourists embarking on their day, sightseeing, exploring. There's virtually nobody. There's a few strivers going to work, some cyclists. So as the city's begun to reopen,

ridership has increased, but it's still nowhere near the levels that it was pre-COVID. You know, another thing that we've been hearing about in the news a lot here and that's been getting a increasing amount of attention is the MTA's very dire financial situation, losing something like $200 million a week. And as you know, they've been begging the federal government for help. And they've announced that if they don't get it, they're going to be service cuts, possibly up to 40 percent and of course massive layoffs. What are your colleagues thinking and feeling right now about all of this? Well, the feeling is that we very quickly have gone from heroes to zeros. And we don't live in a Pollyanna world where we think that the system can be run or maintained without revenue. We're not delusional.

We know ridership is down. We know revenue is down. We know that there were massive losses as a result of the pandemic. But on the other hand, we have to continually remind them that, you know, the same people that you're talking about land. off, the same people that you're talking about giving a ways freeze to, the same people that you're talking about inflicting financial and material injury upon, or the same people that help this city survive. And we're realistic, and we understand that there may be, that we all may have to make or share some measure of sacrifice in terms of, you know,

the financial realities that we're presented with. But we should not bear the brunt of the burden of this hardship. In terms of your job today, in terms of driving a bus, now after the pandemic has sort of peaked in New York City, is the experience any different to passengers treat you differently? There are a few that definitely express their gratitude. They thank us when boarding in a lot. There are some that seem to have a profound sense of gratitude and appreciation for the service that we provide and did provide.

And what would a passenger say to you? They would say thank you. And thank you for your service. And I've had a few people say that to me. Thank you for your service. But for the most part, people just need to get where they need to go. Okay, so now we're making the U-turn. These are the Polo Groundhouses.

pretty notorious housing project in New York City. And this is the last time, the last and first time. Terrence Lane is a bus driver in New York City and a chief shop steward for Transit Workers Union Local 100. He spoke with Jennifer Gonerman of The New Yorker. And you can find Jennifer's remarkable profile of Terrence Lane at New Yorker.com. I'm David Remnick, and that's the New Yorker Radio Hour for today. Thanks for listening.

Hope you'll join us next time. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garvis of Tune Arts, with additional music by Alexis Quadrado. This episode was produced by Alex Barron, Emily Boutin, Ave Carrillo, Riannon and Corby, Calaliyah, David Krasnow, Gofen and Putubuele, Louis Mitchell, Michelle Moses, and Stephen Valentino, with help from Alison McAdam, Meng Faye Chen, and Emily Mann. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Chur

Arena Endowment Fund.