Traffic & Transit
Masks Can Come Off On Worcester Area Buses: WRTA
A federal judge on Monday struck down a mask mandate on all public transit, leaving the masking decision up to local officials.
WORCESTER, MA — One of the last remaining mask mandates in the region went away Tuesday after the Worcester Regional Transit Authority said masking would now be optional on all buses.
WRTA's announcement came less than a day after Florida U.S. District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle struck down a federal mask mandate that covered all forms of transportation, from subways and buses to airplanes.
"Effective April 19, 2022 — masks are optional for all WRTA services," the regional transit agency tweeted just before 1 p.m. Tuesday.
The MBTA, which runs commuter rail trains out of Worcester's Union Station, said it would keep a mask mandate in place immediately after Mizelle's ruling, but later said it would review the court filing.
"The MBTA is continuing to follow CDC guidelines and will review the court order. We are also reaching out to our federal partners to get further guidance," the agency said on Monday after Mizelle's ruling.
The MetroWest Regional Transit Authority, which serves part of Worcester County, also decided to make masks optional on Tuesday.
Coronavirus cases subsided in March following a surge of the omicron variant. But cases are heading back up across the Worcester area and New England broadly. Upper Blackstone Clean Water, the regional wastewater plant, measured about 935,000 copies of COVID-19 per liter of water on April 12 — the highest level dating back to March 30. Worcester added 397 new COVID-19 cases over the week ending April 15, and the city's positive test rate ticked up by about 1/3 of a point to 1.22 percent.
