As the GTA’s two biggest transit agencies beef up disinfecting efforts to stamp out the potential spread of the novel coronavirus, Metrolinx is taking the extra step of installing hand sanitizers in GO Transit stations and on its fleet of buses.

Metrolinx has already ramped up the cleansing of buses, trains and stations with hospital-grade, anti-microbial coating.

“We’re putting gel dispensers on buses,” Metrolinx spokesperson Anne Marie Aikins told the Star on Wednesday.

“Every station now has gel that the public can access. I’ve never seen that before. Those are new efforts.”

Aikins said trains will be excluded because of the logistic hurdles to installing sanitizers at all points of entry on each of the 12 cars.

Metrolinx has already increased its public awareness campaign, reminding GO Transit riders to wash their hands and practise other infectious disease control measures.

Because Metrolinx has never used this agent on its fleet, a third-party contractor was hired to apply the anti-microbial coating, she said.

“It’s a one-time expense, but it’s something we feel is worth investing on,” she said, adding that the final cost isn’t clear yet.

She said cleaning staff have been scrubbing down everything from hand rails, to door knobs, toilets and buttons pressed to access train cars.

TTC spokesperson Stuart Green told the Star on Wednesday that the transit agency hasn’t decided to install hand sanitizers across its much larger fleet and stations.

“We have thought about it,” he said. “It’s not something we’re pursuing now.”

“We have so many more places that we would need to do that,” he said. “We would need to do a deep analysis of where (on trains, stations and buses) we would put them.”

There is also the logistic challenge of refilling the sanitizers. Green said if Toronto Public Health called for that measure, the TTC would move to investigate how it could be done.

The TTC has also been using anti-microbial coating, which is known to kill harmful germs and bacteria months after it has been applied to a surface.

“We still have to monitor (the anti-microbial coating) to make sure it’s staying on,” Green said.

He said the manufacturers say it can last for up to a year, but TTC testing indicated it won’t last that long when it’s in contact from the 1.7 million riders using its service daily.

“We’ve used it previously and our experience is that it lasted a while, but not a year,” Green said. “It’s the kind of thing you would see hospitals using to keep germs at bay.”

Green said the TTC is sanitizing and disinfecting heavy-use touch points such as grab bars, straps, hand rails, escalator rails and elevator buttons.

“All of that now gets a daily wipe down,” he said.

Metrolinx started testing of the antimicrobial agent about three weeks ago, Aikens said. That’s now being used to cleanse everything, from the railings to the floors across the organization.

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“You need to be ahead of it and that’s what we did,” she said of using the long-acting cleaner, which she said kills bacteria, mould, and viruses.

She said it’s non-toxic, doesn’t stain and is odourless.

“We piloted it on a GO Train and found the claims (of its cleaning ability) to be true, so we decided to expand the use of it.”

After a passenger infected with the virus known as COVID-19 travelled on a GO bus from Pearson airport to Richmond Hill last week, Aikens said the agent was used, and the decision was made to use “it on all our trains and buses. First we did all our airport buses.”

The priority was to use it Tuesday night on the UP Express trains that head to the airport because “coronavirus is travel-related, so we wanted to do those first,” she said.

Jason Miller is a breaking news reporter based in Toronto. Reach him on email: jasonmiller@thestar.ca or follow him on Twitter: @millermotionpic

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