To wear or not to wear: my journey to find the face masks
Some are bare-faced; others cover up. Passengers are divided over using face masks, writes Alan O’Keeffe
COUNTING bus passengers who wear masks and those who don’t is one way of passing the time on a city bus route.
So last Friday evening on the 45A from Bray to Dun Laoghaire was a chance to gauge compliance with official advice on maskwearing on public transport.
When the bus glided to a halt on Bray’s Upper Main Street, I stepped on board and paid the driver €3 to bring me to the terminus in Dun Laoghaire.
The driver sat in a perspex bubble. With his side window open. He said he could not take an extra job of policing passengers on the matter of masks. That would be the type of task for a bus conductor, if you had a bus conductor, he said.
Nothing but empty seats lay ahead of me in the downstairs section so I trotted upstairs and found a pair of young couples. All were bare-faced.
My greeting to them was muffled as I was wearing a light blue surgical mask provided with the compliments of our INM Covid team.
I asked them casually for a comment on mask-wearing and I gave them a smile that they could not see.
“I’d only wear one if it was compulsory,” said one of the young men.
I recalled the sign at my bus stop which had real-time bus information and a moving line of words stating masks must be worn on public transport for the protection of passengers.
While he was not adhering to the spirit of the nation’s health efforts, technically he may have been in the right.
Shortly before I boarded the bus, I had a phone conversation with Dermot O’Gara of the National Transport Authority. He confirmed that the actual regulation making masks mandatory on public transport was expected sometime in the coming week. He based it on the words of the outgoing health minister Simon Harris who had indicated the regulations would be ready within a number of days.
He gave the Sunday Independent the results of an updated survey which showed improving passenger compliance on face-covering.
The authority released figures last Wednesday which showed face-covering compliance was up from
41pc to 52pc within a couple of days on Dublin
Bus. He was glad to tell me last Friday that a new survey done the previous day showed compliance on Dublin Bus was up again to 59pc. The current figure for rail travel was 62pc compliance. Bus Eireann, and rural link buses, had compliance figures of 90pc.
He thought that bus drivers might be the ones to ensure mask-wearing when the regulations come into force, just like they oblige passengers to obey bye-laws that prohibit smoking and drinking alcohol.
But I told him that Dermot O’Leary, general secretary of the National
Bus and Rail Union, had told me the night before that his members would not be acting as enforcers.
Mr O’Leary had texted me a reply to a question of whether a bus driver should refuse to allow a passenger travel without a mask. He texted: “As far as we, the NBRU, are concerned, no, we are not gardai or designated law enforcers.”
Meanwhile, back on the 45A, I thanked the barefaced foursome and returned downstairs. The bus turned down Quinsboro Road and drove to the Dart station.
The four alighted and disappeared into the station.
I remained sitting and watched three women board the bus, all masked. One of the women was accompanied by a boy and a girl and neither of the children had masks. Two men boarded, one masked, one not. The bus headed back up towards Main Street. A recording of a woman’s voice announced that due to Covid-19 we should all be social distancing, giving our seats to the elderly, and not be leaving litter behind.
At the stop before the
Fran O’Toole Bridge over the Dargle, a man and a woman boarded, both wearing masks. In Shankill, a young woman got on. No mask.
Sitting in front of me was a young man wearing a mask and large headphones.
I asked him his views and he said: “I don’t think people should be forced to wear masks. You could lose their support. Eventually, everyone will wear masks.”
At Aran Avenue, a woman got on and walked to her seat. She then donned her mask. At the Sheelin Estate, two young women got on the bus. No masks. They chatted loudly the whole way to Dun Laoghaire. Also in Ballybrack, a man boarded wearing a mask. Minutes later, at Ballybrack Shopping Centre, another man got on and he also wore a mask.
The final pick-up was in Dun Laoghaire when a middleaged woman boarded without a mask.
Saying farewell to the bus driver at the last stop, he told me: “We’re not policemen. For all I know, when a passenger sits down on the bus, he could then put on a mask but I don’t know.”
I totted up the figures for the bus journey which showed that 10 people wore masks and 11 did not — six females wore masks, seven females did not wear masks. Four males wore them and four males didn’t.
Outside Dun Laoghaire Dart station, I asked two teenage boys waiting for a bus if they believed in wearing masks. They both told me they had masks in their pockets and intended to wear them. I decided to check out the situation among rail commuters on the train back to Bray.
The ticket seller told me: “More people are wearing masks than before. People have really copped on. I took the train from Arklow at 2.15pm and I would say 99pc wore masks.”
When I boarded the
Dart, it did not take me long to walk the length of the four carriages. Fourteen passengers wore masks, nine did not. Six men wore masks and six men did not. Eight women wore masks and three did not. When it comes to bus versus train, that counts as a win for the train team.
‘More people wear masks. People have copped on’