How will students deal with public transport and Covid-19 risks?

Opinion: the public transport system and Covid-19 restrictions will have a huge affect on the return of students to classes

There are nearly a quarter of a million students in the Irish third level system and about half of them are in the greater Dublin area. Extensive work is underway to accommodate as many as possible as frequently as possible in the upcoming semester, particularly first years who have not yet had a college experience. The planning involves looking at numbers, rooms, buildings and spaces on an institution by institution basis.

There are some very important questions around these plans, especially to do with transport.

- How are all of these students going to get to the buildings, given the drastically reduced public transport capacities we currently see?

· Can staggered hours really reduce or remove Covid-19 risk at a regional level, given the numbers who will travel?

· What impact will the daily movement of hundreds of thousands of people moving through public spaces have on the spread of Covid-19?

· Will the plan to include as many as possible have the opposite effect to what's intended if students have to wait for multiple busses just to get a seat?

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From RTÉ One's Nine News, new measures around public transport get a mixed response

These"showstopper issues require radical new thinking because we know the recent swell in numbers of Covid-19 cases is linked to human behaviour. When human behaviour changes then so too will the spread of the virus. The decisions we now make about return to school and college have much wider implications and we have a chance to be pro-active.

The return to education needs many other elements to work, and this calls for a systems-thinking approach. The problems which transport raise are largely related to third-level because many (but not all) primary and second-level students have more stable transport solutions, such as school busses. This might also have less impact outside of Dublin as the catchment areas tend to be more compact and more cycle-able or walk-able.

But a huge problem is looming for the capital's five large and many smaller higher education institutions, not to mention the many second level students who cross the city for education on a daily basis. In order to answer this challenge, we need to think of our entire third-level education set-up as a system. It has rules, behaviours, constraints and challenges. It also has many benefits.

From RTÉ Radio 1's Liveline, parents and students talk about their anxiety around returning to education in the midst of Covid-19

Systems-thinking is how product engineers accomplish a birds-eye view of a challenge. Part of that is to start from scratch and provide something that really works for people. To do this, we need to first examine the human reality behind it. For this, think about excellent programmes like Big Life Fix. The common thread is that there is often an unseen element that, once detected and remedied, is a game-changer in terms of usability.

Our systemic issue is how to move more than 100,000 people on a daily basis over distances of up to 50km using predominantly public transport with a vastly reduced capacity. We would call this a 'sticky problem' in product and service design and solving it could save some lives. Dublin students usually take a bus, train or Luas to their institution. Even using advanced car-pooling will still have a grid-lock effect - that is, if students could uniformly afford expensive parking during classes which most cannot. Remember that it is not unusual for Dublin lecturers to have students who commute daily from Drogheda or Wexford in their class.

The latest information is that Dublin busses are down to 50% of capacity. Are colleges and universities asking students to wait for several busses in a row to get a seat to go to college or can we do better? Focusing on facilitating attendance could have quite the opposite effect to the one intended, unless the system is considered as a whole. It could also actively prevent certain groups of students - students who are disadvantaged students, students with mental health issues, students with disabilities - from attending.

From RTÉ Radio 1's This Week, Gail Conway on how Covid-19 will affect third level life

So how do we overcome it? Any solution to returning to third level with safety should focus far less upon individual buildings, or even individual institutes for that matter. It calls for a birds-eye view of the many assets and affordances we have in our third level system.

For example, there are currently five main universities in the city who are no doubt communicating best practices to one another, but implementing individual solutions to their individual space constraints. The problem is how many of the thousands of students will use which mode of transport to get to and from class.

The easiest solution is to allow first years in if only to give them a very reduced flavour of college life, and to then focus on students who need additional help (and there are many). Recent research shows a third of our college students face mental health challenges, and tens of thousands have other visible and invisible disabilities.

Will your students miss out because they are waiting for transport?

Our system means that we will shortly know who is coming to college, from where and to where. This allows us to use technology to investigate the patterns of movement through our cities and towns that we know are only weeks away and this could save lives. Down the line, can you assure that your students can get to the classroom reliably? Will they miss out because they are waiting for transport?

Additionally, if individual institutions only focus on those who need to attend the most, our third level system can be used to facilitate other numbers more locally. For example in Dublin, the five regional colleges deliver similar modules. One solution focusing on trust and efficient planning could drastically reduce the need for public transport by creating ‘hub and spoke’ outreach delivery models and reducing the distance of travel and mode of travel to cycle or walk.

One of my own classes last year had over 150 students and finished at 10pm at night, Think of the many students who need a bus to get home and the safety implications of them in the dark and rain of December with no seat on the bus and no money for a taxi. This is an issue that can still be solved with radical systems thinking, but we need to plan for those students who can’t make it, or who sensibly won’t wait for five busses in the rain.

The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ

How will students deal with public transport and Covid-19 risks?

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Maébh Coleman