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IndyGo steps up cleaning of buses, takes safety ‘very seriously’

IndyGo’s response to virus pandemic

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — IndyGo’s bus transportation is considered an essential city service during the coronavirus pandemic.

Management for IndyGo is keeping downtown’s Julia Carson Transit Center open but limiting the number of people and their time inside the building.

Tommie Echols spends a lot of time around the Transit Center waiting for his bus. The emergency declaration has him leaving nothing to chance. “I got my spray bottle” loaded with alcohol, Echols said.

Echols says he sprays the protective gloves he is wearing a lot. With the bus as his daily transportation he is concerned it hasn’t been properly cleaned.

“I think they don’t have enough people around here,” Echols said.

Another IndyGo rider, Kevin Bond wouldn’t take off his protective mask for an interview with News 8. He is hypervigilant when it comes to protecting himself. He says his regular bus was dusty and needed cleaning, and he’s not sure it was sanitized well enough.

“I’m concerned about, I don’t know, if somebody has a bad cold or that virus. You don’t know,” Bond said.

Plenty of drivers and passengers alike share Bond’s concern. IndyGo drivers parked at the Transit Center on Wednesday afternoon was either cleaning their bus or wearing a mask.

“We are taking safety very seriously,” said Lesley Gordon, the public affairs director of IndyGo.

She says the buses are being cleaned at least once a day and while at the Transit Center.

“We have also started electrostatic cleaning, which will help us. It is a deeper cleaning. It will disinfect for a little longer and will reach some of those hard to reach places, and we have added more hand sanitation stations and making sure our operators know where those stations are and making sure everything we are doing is as clear as possible,” Gordon said.

IndyGo will maintain its full schedule until further notice.