FILE – San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit police officers Nick Luzano, left, Eric Kelly, center, and Eric Hofstein, right, wear masks while patrolling a Richmond bound train from Powell Street Station BART platform in San Francisco, Calif., on Nov. 20, 2020. The BART board of directors decided, Thursday, April 28, 2022, to temporarily restore a mask mandate for riders on the rail system a week after it was dropped. The new mandate is effective until July 18, unless extended. (Jessica Christian/San Francisco Chronicle via AP, File)
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A mask mandate for commuter rail passengers is back by popular demand in the San Francisco Bay Area, the region that two years ago imposed the nation’s first coronavirus stay-at-home order and now is bucking the national trend away from required face coverings
The Bay Area Rapid Transit system, known as BART, had decided last week to drop its rule in line with a federal court ruling but that decision prompted an outcry, spokeswoman Alicia Trost said Friday.
“We started to immediately hear from riders in phone calls, emails, tweets, that they felt unsafe on the train if there was not a mask mandate,” BART spokeswoman Alicia Trost said Friday.
BART’s board of directors decided in a meeting Thursday to temporarily restore the mask rule until at least July 18, the agency said in a statement. Children ages 2 and under as well as people with medical conditions that prevent them from wearing masks are exempt from the mandate.
The decision makes the Bay Area’s largest transit system the latest in California to bring back a mandate for face coverings after Los Angeles County restored its masking rule a week ago for all public transportation including buses, trains, subways, taxis and airports.
The reinstatement came 10 days after a federal judge in Florida ended the nation’s federal mask mandate on public transportation, freeing airlines, airports and mass transit systems to make their own decisions about mask requirements. A mix of responses has taken shape across the country that reflects the nation’s ongoing divisions over how to battle the virus.
Major airlines immediately dropped mask requirements after the decision, as did many local transit agencies around the country.
New York City, Chicago and Connecticut, however, continued to require masks for travelers.
San Francisco and Los Angeles public transit agencies initially dropped their mask requirements, but many have since flip-flopped.
Thursday’s BART board meeting was flooded by callers who voiced support for reinstating the policy in particular to protect vulnerable riders, Trost said.
BART, which connects San Francisco to its eastern and southern suburbs, is struggling to restore ridership that plummeted from pre-pandemic highs of over 400,000 weekday riders to about 130,000, according to recent data. It quickly became clear that banishing mask mandates would not help.