Despite promises to keep their passengers safe during the pandemic, data from Metro-North Police shows that not a single citation was issued to violators of the facemask rule on the commuter railroad in the last nine months.
— an announcement from The Commuter Action Group
“Kudos to CTExaminer.com reporter Brendan Crowley for his FOI request for this
data, filed in late May,” said Jim Cameron of The Commuter Action Group.
“As an advocate for riders’ interest I’ve heard almost daily reports of unmasked riders on trains… reported details to the railroad and seen no action taken. This data confirms their ‘safety measures’ were a sham.”
As the CTExaminer reported today:
Transit workers have issued 38 summons for refusing to wear a mask on
public transit since MTA instituted fines on Sept. 14, 2020 — that number
includes riders on New York City subways and buses, and the Long Island
Railroad Since the beginning of 2020, MTA reported that it had issued 772
citations on Metro-North trains, but none for failing to wear masks.
Failing to wear a mask can result in a $50 fine in New York and $100 in
Connecticut.
“The railroad has spent more money on PR and social media campaigns than
enforcement of this simple safeguard: requiring and enforcing mask-wearing
compliance on all trains as ordered by the TSA,” said Cameron.
“They’ve sanitized car interiors and added UV radiation treatments of the HVAC,
when all it took was a 10 cent facemask to protect riders. What good are all the
masks they’ve handed out on trains if they don’t enforce their wearing?”
“Conductors have no trouble getting people to keep their feet off the seats, so
enforcing a rule to keep people alive shouldn’t be difficult. If you smoke a
cigarette on a train, you’d be booted off. But endanger everyone’s health by not
wearing a mask — there’s zero consequence. That’s wrong.
“These are federal rules, and they should be enforced.”