Since the first San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) employee tested positive for COVID-19 on March 25, the agency has slashed all but the bus lines deemed most essential and eliminated rail service altogether.

But the number of MTA employees to test positive for the respiratory illness has risen to 10, union leaders said, including six bus operators. More have been quarantined after showing symptoms or possibly being exposed but have not tested positive.

The agency isn’t moving fast enough to protect its employees on the frontlines, said Roger Marenco, president of the Transport Workers Union Local 250-A.

“They’ve done things on a very slow basis,” Marenco said. “The measures they’ve implemented have been on a slow basis. They have not been adequate, and as a result, we’re suffering.”

When San Francisco announced its first shelter-in-place order March 16, SFMTA followed with its first reduction in service and discouraged nonessential trips but also stressed was keeping its fleet clean.

After its first driver tested positive nine days later, the agency implemented a variety of safety precautions. It removed from service any vehicle without a barrier for the driver and began to sanitize every vehicle each night. It has since begun to require passengers board through the rear after initially holding off on backdoor boarding, citing concerns about crowding one half of the bus.

Muni has made the deepest service cuts of any Bay Area transit agency. Fare and parking revenue is down 80-90%, executive director Jeffrey Tumlin said last week.

Only 17 of the city’s 89 bus lines, which accounted for 80% of ridership the week before the decision was made, remain in operation. It cut all light rail and cablecar service.

But the union wants Muni to follow measures taken by other transit agencies.

In the East Bay, AC Transit has eliminated fares and implement backdoor boarding. In the South Bay, so, too, has the Valley Transportation Authority. Some SFMTA operators have taken measures into their own hands, taping off the fare boxes and front sections of their buses.

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Pac-12 football will be back in 2020, but the specifics remain a mystery There are two more steps Marenco would like to see taken: mandate masks for all riders, and limit bus service to essential workers only.

“So you have to flash your badge or some type of special ID saying you’re an essential worker, a disaster-services worker, in order to take the bus,” Marenco said.

SFMTA has implemented backdoor boarding but hasn’t joined other agencies in the region in eliminating fares. Have leaders been receptive to the mask mandate and ID requirement?

“At the moment,” Marenco said, “no.”