TriMet released a video Wednesday afternoon showing the extensive efforts its maintenance crews are undertaking each night to disinfect hundreds of buses and light-rail trains across the Portland region.

The nearly seven-minute-long video shows workers sporting masks and holding, in some cases, industrial sprayers, and spreading cleaning chemicals far and wide on seats and surfaces of MAX trains. Crews then wipe down the surfaces with rags.

The video release comes six days after the tri-county transit service said it would step up cleaning on hundreds of buses and MAX trains every night amid growing concerns about the coronavirus in the Portland area.

TriMet already cleaned trains and buses to some degree – some were deep cleaned, some only touched up -- but the policy change took those cleanings to a different level. Now, at least 114 MAX vehicles and at least 584 buses every weekday are sprayed with disinfectant and surfaces that riders frequently touch get wiped down. That includes doors, poles and the rubber straps that hang on some vehicles.

WES commuter trains and paratransit vehicles are also disinfected nightly, the agency said.

TriMet said it has 26 workers on the cleaning crew, and other employees are being offered overtime to help out.

Officials note that despite the deep cleaning, a door, pole or other surface on a bus or train is only clean until someone touches it, sneezes on it or coughs.

Roberta Altstadt, a TriMet spokeswoman, said media outlets requested to observe the cleanings, but she said that TriMet was “unable to fulfill” those requests. “Our maintenance teams are being asked to do more, in confined area, during limited windows,” she said in an email. “Our service is 24 hours, so time is of the essence when they are focused on the cleaning.”

Check out the video.

-- Andrew Theen; atheen@oregonian.com; 503-294-4026; @andrewtheen

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