Transit drivers report spotty mask use, seek more enforcement
The union representing bus drivers says compliance with the mask rule is as low as 50 per cent on some routes.
Masks have been required on Saskatoon Transit buses for almost two months, but not everyone is donning a face covering before paying their fare and taking their seat.
Now, with COVID-19 cases spiking, the union representing the city’s bus drivers and a grassroots passenger group say more should be done to enforce the rule.
“Our members are on edge. It’s tense out there. We would just love to see everybody wearing a mask and trying to flatten the curve together,” said Amalgamated Transit Union Local 615 president Darcy Pederson.
Drivers are reporting a wide range of compliance, from as low as 50 per cent on some of the busiest routes in town to higher than 90 per cent on some others, he said. He called the figures “most definitely” concerning.
Robert Clipperton, a spokesman for Bus Riders of Saskatoon, offered a similar assessment, saying the large Facebook group’s members are reporting a wide range of compliance, depending on the route and time of day.
Both Clipperton and Pederson also emphasized that many passengers board the bus with a face covering but pull it down to their chins after reaching their seats, rendering the face covering ineffective.
According to the city, 4,445 passengers out of 370,088, or 0.01 per cent, were reported as not wearing masks in September, falling to 3,834 of 393,013 riders — less than a tenth of one per cent — the following month.
City hall’s data shows 0.003 per cent of riders were reported as unmasked to date this month. That is a total of 878 out of 232,708 passengers on city buses.
Clipperton said enforcement through education is “inadequate,” while Pederson said the union has proposed security guards to ensure compliance while keeping drivers safe from any kind of altercation.
“There needs to be some sort of a consequence, a fine or a refusal of service. Otherwise, the non-compliance is just going to continue,” Pederson said in an interview on Tuesday.
At least one city councillor appears to share that perspective.
At council’s governance and priorities committee meeting on Monday, David Kirton, who was elected to represent Ward 3 on Nov. 13, expressed concern about the “heightened volatility” over mask use amid “skyrocketing” cases.
The former broadcaster and only new face on city council said he feels “uncomfortable” with bus drivers being left alone to try to enforce the mandate, and suggested adding security personnel to buses.
“I don’t believe we have finished the job in supporting our bus drivers on this,” he said.
Saskatoon city council voted to make masks mandatory on all transit buses in late August. The order came into force Sept. 1, but there were no plans for enforcement except in cases involving egregious repeat offenders.
The stated aim of that policy was to protect drivers from getting into altercations with passengers who refused to don face coverings, a possibility Pederson expressed concern about at the time. He and Clipperton agreed that is not the right approach.
City manager Jeff Jorgenson responded to Kirton by saying the issue has been “extensively looked at” by transit organizations across Canada following reports of violent confrontations on transit vehicles elsewhere in the world.
“We feel that we have what I would call leading-edge (policy). We’re as progressive as any transit property with our direction to our operators on how to handle masks,” Jorgenson said.
“I believe it is not a no mask, no ride policy … It’s a case where operators have latitude,” he said.
Operators also have emergency call buttons to summon a supervisor or even the police if the situation warrants it, added Terry Schmidt, the city’s general manager of transportation and construction.
Saskatoon police spokeswoman Alyson Edwards said in an email on Tuesday that no tickets have been issued for non-compliance on city buses, and she is not aware of any calls to respond to mask-related issues on public transit.
“In the event we were called, our approach is always to attempt to educate to gain compliance as opposed to ticket,” she said.