SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) – On a regular Tuesday morning in the Bay Area, everything is busy – from bridges and traffic to bustling BART trains and lack of parking at stations.
But none of that was the case this morning as more and more people are apparently staying home amid the growing coronavirus outbreak.
A photo sent to KRON4 by viewer Gina Rodriguez shows an empty BART parking lot in Concord at 8 a.m.; not normal by any standards.
The video above shows the Embarcadero BART station around the same time, with only a handful of people seen milling around the station compared to the hundreds that usually flock the area on a regular morning.
BART officials tell KRON4 last week there was an 8% drop in ridership.
A decrease in the population is evident in part to some big companies in the area telling their employees to work from home, such as Facebook, Salesforce, Amazon, Microsoft, and Twitter.
There are 88 confirmed cases of the coronavirus in the Bay Area.
Several schools around the Bay Area have also closed or modified their class schedules amid the outbreak.
Even traffic is seeming lighter, too.
KRON4’s Robin Winston reported Tuesday seeing fewer commuters on the Bay Bridge on what would normally be a very busy morning.
KRON4 posted a poll on Twitter on Monday asking people whether they were working from home or not during the outbreak. With nearly a thousand votes, 73% voted no and 27% voted yes.
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