John Minchillo/AP Photo
A home care nurse attempts to reason with a fellow bus passenger who refuses to wear a face mask, in New York City, April 2020.
As the pandemic intensified last March, Steve Soliz, a Lansing, Michigan, bus driver, did not have a protective plastic shield on his Capital Area Transportation Authority bus. Drivers were not issued masks, gloves, or goggles. Each time the bus got crowded or too many people congregated up front, an invisible stream of droplet-tainted air hit Soliz. “We weren’t able to enforce anything on the public,” he says. “I have had people just flat out refuse to wear a mask.” Citing company policy or appealing to a person’s own sense of self-preservation did not sway Soliz’s most defiant riders. Local orders did not deter them either.
But the federal mask mandate clarified expectations for everyone. “It just carries a different weight,” Soliz says. President Biden’s executive order requiring masks on public transportation under protocols established by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention empowers workers like Soliz. Now if a passenger refuses to put on a mask, there are stronger repercussions including possible fines and arrest. However, while bus drivers, train conductors, and flight attendants have a federal directive to point to, in many cases, they can’t really enforce compliance, a conundrum that underlines the chronic lack of investment in public-transportation security measures.
Bus operators have faced resistance ever since the CDC recommended wearing masks last year to reduce the transmission of COVID-19. Any driver who utters the request “Please wear a mask” may soon find themself in the middle of a verbal onslaught or with a wad of spit between the eyes. Ask a second time, and they might have to fend off a fist to their face or worse. A Baltimore driver was shot and killed after a mask altercation in late January. In France, a group of passengers beat a Bayonne bus driver to death last July after he asked them to wear masks. Most buses offer minimal physical protection and rarely have transit police or other security.
As it stands, bus operators, train conductors, and flight attendants must call and wait for police or airport security officers to arrive. The Transportation Security Administration’s mask mandate memorandum states that employees are to “make [their] best efforts to disembark the person who refuses to comply” and must note the passenger’s name, travel information, and the reason for refusal. Fines range from $250 for first-time offenders to $1,500 for repeat offenders.
BANNER
When the Prospect asked what employees should do while they wait for law enforcement, a TSA spokesman responded with a statement that TSA requires that “transportation owners and operators ensure that all individuals wear face masks” and that “individuals without a mask be denied entry, boarding, or continued transport.” The statement did not address how employees should handle an irate individual who refused to comply.
When Soliz has to call in law enforcement to deal with aggressive riders, the period between the initial call and police officers’ arrival is tense as patrons become frustrated and unnerved over the unexpected delay. “They start getting animated as well,” he says. Soliz has seen customers start fights and has had to transform from bus operator into mediator to calm the situation. As a 31-year veteran of the Lansing-area transit authority, Soliz has mastered this second job; however, less-experienced drivers face greater risks, he says.
“Putting bus operators in the position of doing essentially law enforcement for this is problematic,” says Robert Puentes, president of the Eno Center for Transportation, a Washington-based think tank. While Puentes sees the mask mandate as a significant step in the right direction, he worries about the drivers’ capacities to enforce the mandate while also operating their vehicles and ensuring their own safety. Many bus operators across the nation adopted the policy of rear-door boarding to minimize public exposure to drivers. Puentes believes this was the right move to keep drivers safe; however, this change hinders the driver’s ability to screen and monitor passenger behavior, such as who is wearing a mask and who isn’t as riders board a bus.
Even with No Fly List and TSA screenings, flight attendants experience some of the same aggression and violence that bus and train workers face.
John Costa, international president of the Amalgamated Transit Union, says the union has been pushing for legislation pertaining to these design and safety issues for the past decade. “If drivers are stressed and getting punched in the face while driving and get in a crash,” he says, “a lot of people can be hurt.” Costa says the COVID-19 pandemic has illustrated the need for a major redesign of American buses. He suggests that buses have a glass panel enclosing the driver and that drivers have access to a side door to exit in case of an emergency. Some may find such a redesign hard to imagine, yet the design already exists in Mercedes-Benz Citaro buses used in Germany.
While city buses face unique enforcement and security challenges, other modes of transportation, such as Amtrak, the president’s favorite rail operator, also face risks. Amtrak conductors have been victims of aggression and assault in a number of mask confrontations and other unrelated incidents over the past year. While Amtrak CEO Bill Flynn and the Transportation Communications Union, Amtrak’s largest labor union, have called on Congress to extend the TSA’s No Fly List to American railways, action has yet to be taken. Right now, anyone who violates the mandate may be “banned from future travel in the event of noncompliance,” Kimberly Woods, an Amtrak public relations manager, told the Prospect.
Still, even with No Fly List and TSA screenings, flight attendants experience some of the same aggression and violence that bus and train workers face. This month, an intoxicated passenger headbutted a flight attendant after being asked to comply with the mask mandate. In December, the Federal Aviation Administration issued fines of $15,000 and $7,500, respectively, to two passengers who verbally and physically assaulted flight attendants after they asked them to put on masks.
“There are still issues every day that flight attendants are dealing with,” says Taylor Garland, public relations coordinator for the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA. “But what’s really helpful with the mask mandate is one flight attendant can say to a passenger that this is now a federal mandate, which carries a lot more weight.”
According to Costa, collecting data on assaults would be one key action that the Department of Transportation could take to help protect public-transportation employees. “Right now, they don’t have to,” he says. Without that data, it remains unclear how often these attacks occur, which, in turn, makes it difficult for transportation officials and municipal leaders to diagnose the causes and enact specific reforms.
The federal mask mandate provides public-transportation employees like Soliz with a greater level of protection than they had two months ago. Yet their ability to enforce this newfound authority remains largely unchanged. They now have the gear to help protect themselves against the virus, but when it comes to passengers, bus drivers and others are on their own. “The idea of ‘no shirt, no shoes, no service’ now applies to wearing a mask and wearing it properly,” Soliz says. “It’s kind of like standing behind the yellow line on the bus.” Just as it falls to Soliz to inform riders that they must wear a shirt and shoes and stand behind the yellow line, he is the person who will have to deal with the backlash if he asks riders to “please wear a mask.”
This article is part of our ongoing series on sustainable mobility, transportation, and climate.
