Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) and NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) have both come under heavy fire in recent weeks over the fact that New York City subways were not being cleaned and sanitized on a daily basis. In spite of the lockdown in place in the city, essential workers have still been using the subways to get to their destinations, which means people have been standing shoulder to shoulder in cramped quarters, which is the primary way the virus is spread.

In addition to that, there are daily reports of how the homeless are camping out in subways overnight. With the subways already being dirty, and without people wearing protective gear like masks and taking the necessary precautions like washing their hands, the subways have become, as some describe them, “filthy.”

Just last week, Cuomo ordered them to be shut down at night for a nightly scrubdown prior to the wave of subway riders that take over weekday mornings:

New York City’s subway system — the nation’s largest — went silent in the early morning hours Wednesday as the normally round-the-clock system shut down for train disinfecting.

Service was curtailed in late March, but is now being stopped entirely from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. each day.

It’s the first time in 115 years service hasn’t been 24/7 except in times of emergency, and Governor Andrew Cuomo says there’s no way to know when service will return to normal, notes CBS New York.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) saw the report about how this was the first time in 115 years they’d been shut down overnight for cleaning, and provided this timely advice:

Probably should clean them more frequently than once every 115 years. https://t.co/KXMal2McAm

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) May 6, 2020

While it’s not the first time they’ve been cleaned in 115 years, it is the first time in 115 years they’ve been sidelined nightly for thorough cleaning and sanitizing, which is overdue even when the nation is not going through a pandemic.

And as I noted this morning, the nightly cleaning of the subways should have been a thing from the very start of the pandemic in the city.

Not only that, but early on, the city should have been urging more people to find other ways to get to work besides the subway and should have mandated wearing masks on the subway for those who did ride it (that didn’t happen until mid April). Too bad city and state leaders didn’t do either until the virus had already spread like wildfire.