Despite rift over mask mandates, Metro policy operating ‘smoothly’
Amid rush-hour traffic on a late August afternoon, a Metro bus lurched to a halt in front of a stop on Hillcroft in southwest Houston.
Two passengers were waiting, but only one got to board.
The driver held out her hand to stop the would-be rider: a man not wearing a face mask. In June, she might have offered him one, but those supplies have apparently dwindled over the summer. Instead, she shut the door and shook her head as the bus pulled away.
Since June 2020, refusing service to maskless riders has been standard operating procedure for the Metropolitan Transit Authority. The mass transit operator is bound by federal guidelines to require everyone over 2 years old to wear masks onboard.
Violators can be fined up to $3,000, recently doubled from $1,500 after a slew of confrontations over the rule on planes.
The federal requirement, recently extended to January, has allowed Metro to sidestep a showdown over local mask mandates that erupted this summer after Gov. Greg Abbott’s May executive order banning such mandates. As Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton escalate reprisals against school districts for requiring masks, Metro is quietly operating some of the most masked facilities in Houston:
public buses and light rail.
Mask enforcement is usually handled by bus operators, who deny passengers attempting to board without face coverings. But once or twice per day across the network, a passenger will board anyway and refuse to comply, Metro spokesperson Jerome Gray said.
“When that occurs … operators contact supervisors, stop the vehicle and arrange for alternate transportation,” Gray said in an August interview. “Generally, that prompts the patron who refuses to wear a mask to either put on a mask or get off the vehicle.”
Requiring bus drivers, teachers or other employees to enforce mask requirements has produced mixed results in many cities. Social media abounds with viral videos of irate, maskless customers arguing with or assaulting service workers asking them to comply with rules.
But on Houston’s buses and trains, the mask requirement has been “going pretty smoothly,” said Fidel Minor, vice president of the Transit Workers Union Local 260, which represents Metro workers. The policy is one of several protective measures Metro implemented quickly after the pandemic started, Minor said.
“I have to give the transit authority praise when due — they were the first major transit agency to have their (personal protective equipment) in place and distributed to employees,” Minor said. “Gloves, sanitizer and face masks issued, sanitizing stations on all of their vehicles for public use, and a shower curtain between the riding public and operators.”
The agency had also purchased 3 million masks for passengers back in 2020, though as of early August, some buses no longer appeared to offer masks.
Despite Abbott’s recent pledge to crack down on dissenting local officials, which has caused some school districts to vacillate on mandating masks, Metro has made clear it will require all students to mask up as schools resume classes and ridership is projected to increase.
That commitment helps operators maintain order, Minor said. “Our operators have done a really great job handling things with our governor saying nobody can make you wear a mask,” he said.
Still, Minor said Metro workers are feeling the toll of working through the pandemic, including a disproportionate rate of COVID-19 among bus operators and transit police officers.
As of last Tuesday, the agency had reported cases among 769 Metro employees and 159 contractors since March 2020. About half of them had no contact with the public, the agency said in a release.
Transit officials said federal policies, state laws and labor agreements mean Metro cannot require its 4,000 employees to be vaccinated. The agency is instead offering up to eight hours of pay for workers to be vaccinated, spokesperson Tracy Jackson said.
Metro in August also began requiring unvaccinated employees to submit to weekly COVID testing. Last week its board approved more than $3 million for temperature checks at facilities through next September and to pay for COVID tests for unvaccinated employees and contractors through March.
The agency could not provide data on what percentage of employees is vaccinated, Jackson said.
Metro, which recently received $299 million in federal aid, is gearing up for fleet upgrades and route expansions, though ridership remains halved from pre-pandemic levels. The agency is in need of more bus operators and mechanics, offering hundreds of dollars in hiring bonuses.
But without comparable retention bonuses and more pay for bus drivers working split shifts, Minor said, “the hiring bonus diminishes the morale of those who have been here and who have made heroic efforts through the pandemic, the freeze, the storms.”