The group is pushing for a solution they think could have immediate impact: free masks and hand sanitizer at the front of every bus and every station. “That puts more kind of onus on them again to be counting and keeping tabs on the number of passengers on the vehicle as well,” she said. Julia Gerasimenko is with the Chicago Active Transportation Alliance, which pushes for equity in public transportation.
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In terms of social distancing, drivers are told not to let more than 15 people on a standard-size bus and to pass customers once they’ve hit that capacity. To be clear, the city and state both have said that masks are required in public spaces where social distancing is not possible - including on buses and trains.īut Hill wants stronger and more consistent publicity about the fact that it’s mandatory to wear a mask the entire time you’re on a bus. We need both of them to take a stance and just outright come out and say, make it mandatory.” “But we as CTA operators, we need a little bit more help. “The city and the state, the governor and the mayor are doing a great job of tackling this pandemic,” Hill said. Hill, the president of the union, reiterated that desire. He’d also like to see mask dispensers and hand sanitizer at the front of every bus. He’d like to see more forceful messaging from city and state officials about better COVID-19 precautions on the CTA. Gilkey said he knows upwards of 12 people personally, including coworkers and family members, who’ve died from COVID-19. Around him, three out of 11 riders were not wearing masks. “And you’re on the bus and you’ve got seven people with no mask on, and you don’t know who’s asymptomatic or symptomatic to this virus,” he said, speaking to WBEZ while on the 66 Chicago bus on Thursday afternoon. “On a bus, you have no room, and they’re not social distancing themselves,” Gilkey said. “CTA puts the safety of its employees as a top priority and will not ask employees to risk their personal safety to confront someone not wearing a mask,” CTA spokesperson Brian Steele said in a statement.įor 23-year veteran driver Kelvin Gilkey, that means he’s letting on around 20 maskless riders on any given route. The Chicago Transit Authority has told drivers not to argue with people who are not wearing masks, in an effort to protect the personal safety of their drivers. “The concerns of safety measures is an all-time high on many different levels.” “We put our life on the line, but the lack of power that we have to enforce the right to protect ourselves by asking people to wear a mask when they board the bus or asking them that the bus is too crowded, can they wait on the next one? We put ourselves in confrontational situations,” said Keith Hill, the president of the union that represents about 6,000 current CTA bus workers. And that responsibly has largely fallen on them as they’re caught in a Catch-22 - not wanting to confront customers but being concerned about the safety of themselves and others.
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