A personal project aimed at rethinking the use and design of hand rails on public transport for COVD-19
COVID-19 has made travelling on public transport extremely difficult.
Viruses can live on smooth surfaces for 72+ hours, making hand rails on public transport particularly likely to contribute to the spread of coronavirus. However, these hand rails or objects that can be held on to are necessary and present on trains, buses and the London underground. Can these be redesigned such that the spread of viruses is minimised?
Looking at textured surfaces:
Viruses can remain on smooth surfaces for long times. Irregular, textured surfaces have the potential to reduce this time. By adding holes, grooves and bumps, the surface that the person touches can be minimised but this also compromises the ease of cleaning the surface.
Solid, smooth hand rails could be redesigned to include meshes, lattice structures, holes, ridges etc.
Increasing the number of hand rails:
Textured surfaces are hard to clean so adding more hand rails could be an alternative.
Although adding more hand rails increases the surfaces that the virus could stick to, this also increases the amount of available hand rail for people to hold on to. There is then less chance of two people consecutively holding touching the same area.
This is an ongoing project which is still in the idea development phase.