CommentsTRANSIT LA-Since March 19, 2020, California has been under COVID-19 restrictions, and Metro is just now discussing the possibilities of requiring all bus and train riders to wear face masks.
This only came about after a letter to Metro from Los Angeles County Supervisor Janice Hahn. Hahn read a Los Angeles Times article about the worries of bus operators, who, like others facing the public in their jobs, are exposed to the virus daily. They are among the essential workers we depend on for our health and safety against the death march of the novel coronavirus.
Thank you, Supervisor Hahn.
Stores and restaurants have been requiring customers to wear faces mask to enter. When outside we all should wear face masks to try to reduce the spread of the disease. As we know, there are groups of protestors who feel they are immune to COVID, but there is no immunity right now. These people stand shoulder to shoulder not wearing face masks, and do not stand six feet apart as they protest their perceived lack of freedoms.
Wearing a face mask is indeed a matter of freedom, the freedom of people not to get infected by the virus just because others have chosen not to wear one.
Mass transit is an essential service in the age of the virus and will become even more so in the fight against global warming and climate. Yet, when the safety concerns of their bus operators were raised, Metro Spokesman Dave Sotero said it was physically impractical to require all riders to wear masks.
Well, maybe, but there are laws about speeding while driving, and it is surely impractical to ticket every speeder, but these laws are a deterrent to all to not speed. Metro should make it official policy that all riders must wear masks to ride on its buses or trains. If they don’t, let the police deal with them.
Metro should remember, it’s no secret that the virus can be spread from person to person through open air exchange within six feet, hence the need for a face mask. Or the virus can be picked up on one’s hands and then by touching one’s face.
Yet perhaps Metro, like the no-mask-wearing protestors, feels their bus operators and the public that uses their buses and trains are somehow immune. The bus drivers, train operators, transit workers in the field, and we, the riders, are certainly not immune.
Or perhaps, in typical Metro fashion, they give too little thought about how their operations affect bus and rail operators, cleaning crews, other transit workers dealing with the public, and also to the public itself -- riders like me who use the system.
Supervisor Hahn sent her letter to Metro on May 4, 2020. The response from Metro is an issue that will be raised at the next Metro Board of Directors on May 28, 2020. That is twenty-three days from May 5, 2020.
Metro, how many more of your personnel and even possibly your clients, your patrons, your riders, will you place in harm’s way through possible exposure to COVID-19 before the issue is even considered? This contagious this disease, this death march, this virus which has shut down the world has been here for months. It is here now. It will be in the future.
Metro, please get out of your social isolation and myopic vision. You are appearing arrogant and uncaring. Act now. Today. Require that all riders wear masks to board a bus or train. Do it now.
(Matthew Hetz is a Los Angeles native. He is a transit rider and advocate, a composer, music instructor, and member and president and executive director of the Culver City Symphony Orchestra. He is a CityWatch contributor.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
