re: OT: Alabama Coronavirus Thread (see link in OP for case numbers and death totals in AL)

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but all y'all picking on Georgia know that California hasn't closed all their beaches right?

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Georgia's a bit closer to home for most of us.

I think the criticism is that he is overriding local shelter in place mandates to open the beaches. I think that it pertains to beaches is inconsequential.

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I think the criticism is that he is overriding local shelter in place mandates to open the beaches.

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That could be a fair point. I do not know enough about Georgia home rule laws and traditions to have any opinion on that part.

NVM, wm72 has it covered. I will add routes were cut by the MTA on March 25th and the NYT and local media have covered the crowding at least since March 30th. Also local government is actively seeking to police it, although I don't know how effective it is.

Yeah, they're now stationing police officers to try to enforce distancing on subway cars but it's a huge mess.

The amount of available train cars are not sufficient to get people work anywhere near on time and you can imagine that the last thing the NYPD needs right now is a call to divert 1/3 of their force to put people in lines on subway platforms.


MTA, maybe rightly, claims that they have tons of employees out sick and are too understaffed to run full service.


Certainly, you can find some fools who just want to go somewhere and think they're American and no one's going to tell them where they can't go but I think it's a very small percentage that really want to get into that mess without a damn good reason.


The irony is probably that the people who keep circulating these photos without adding the proper context will probably be the one most aghast when people call for NY state to make the MTA a fully-public entity after this.

Same with me. I live on 6 acres, on a 2 lane street with no sidewalks, with a 100 acre pasture and pond in front of me, a 15 (plus or minus) acre plot of pine forest next to me. I have to travel 5 miles or more to get to either a grocery store or gas station, or pharmacy.

The South doesn't live on top of each other like NY, except in Atlanta, BHam, NO, or the other major Southern cities. We're spread out and depend on our cars/trucks more.

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You're 100% right, but again for the sake of accuracy that NY Times map is at the very least similarly misleading.

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I agree.

That map comes from some company using data from phones to simply trace average distance covered in a day. NYT as well as a lot of other outlets have posted it.

I definitely agree that it's absurd to compare almost anywhere specifically to NYC aside from the SF Bay Area

I think it is interesting if you compare central Indiana/ Illinois / Ohio / Upstate NY to southern states since both are completely driving cultures.

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make the MTA a fully-public entity after this.

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At the risk of derailing the thread, I'm genuinely curious how a publicly operated transit system would fare any better in the current situation.

The fundamental problem is that a huge number of people need to get the same place at the same time. Simple human behavior says that they're going all try to pile on the first train that opens the doors because they don't want to be late for work. If you tripled the number of available trains, they're still going to pile on that first one.

Don't take this as some attack on NY. It isn't. Manhattan's population density is what, 67,000 a square mile? There's just no way to social distance when you're moving that many people between 7-8 am and 5-6pm no matter what name is on the deed to the train.

I'd also venture to guess that all those people that are taking the subway are traveling more than 2 miles. My point is that the map is bullshite and nothing more than the sky screamers trying to place blame on the South.