Through funding supplied by the Federal Transit Administration under the project title “Technical Support for Transit Safety Standards and Standards Initiative,” VTTI collaborated with the Center for Urban Transportation Research at the University of South Florida to study transit bus ventilation in the age of COVID-19. Senior research associate Andrew Krum served as the principal investigator (PI) for this project and can be reached at akrum@vtti.vt.edu.
The main objectives of the study were to explore:
The physical bus airflow analysis was tested on the Virginia Smart Roads on three separate 40-ft transit bus configurations. Subsequent recommendations included combining gravity (physical distance) and dilution (fresh air) with established and new bus components that can decrease the exposure of bus drivers and passengers to COVID-19 on different bus configurations.