By Luisa Volkhausen
Is the end of the mask requirement on buses and trains approaching? After the first country heads, transport companies are also in favor of an end to the obligation!
“We welcome the proposal to abolish the obligation to wear masks on local public transport. A consistent control is not possible, spot checks are not enough,” explains a spokesman for Stadtwerke München to BILD. “The abolition of the mask requirement is an adjustment to reality.”
Because, so the argument goes: If a mask no longer has to be worn for shopping, at major events or on the plane, it can no longer be explained why masks are compulsory on the subway, bus and tram.
And so the Stadtwerke spokesman continued: “People who want to protect themselves by wearing a mask can continue to do so.”
The Verkehrs- und Tarifverbund Stuttgart GmbH (VVS) is also in favor of an end to the corona mask requirement. “Germany is currently in a special position with regard to the obligation to wear masks in local public transport,” said a VVS spokeswoman. “In most countries, including neighboring countries – e.g. Switzerland or France – this was lifted many months ago.”
When asked by BILD, the Schwerin transport company “Nahverkehr Schwerin” explained: “In day-to-day practice, personal responsibility would be a possible solution, or rather a compromise.”
The Düsseldorf Rheinbahn is in favor of a nationwide rule that “takes medical needs into account, but at the same time creates a comparability with other areas of the public sector that is understandable for citizens, in which there has now been extensive relaxation”.
The Association of German Transport Companies (VDV) called for an end to the obligation to wear masks on buses and trains in September, when the obligation to wear masks on planes was already canceled on October 1st. VDV General Manager Oliver Wolff spoke of “arbitrariness as to when masks have to be worn and when not”.
Voluntary mask wearing could soon become a reality for bus and train drivers in Schleswig-Holstein and Bavaria: Prime Minister Daniel Günther (49, CDU) announced that he did not want to extend the mask requirement in public transport next year.
Instead: personal responsibility! “You stay at home with symptoms,” says Günther. And Bavaria’s Prime Minister Markus Söder (55, CSU) also announced: “In December, by January at the latest, the mandatory mask requirement could be converted into a voluntary recommendation if the situation remains the same.”.
A move that has met with great approval!
︎ A BILD survey has shown: 90 percent of the participants are in favor of an end to the general obligation to wear masks and want to rely on personal responsibility instead! Only ten percent are still in favor of a general obligation to wear masks (11,183 participants; as of Wednesday 11 a.m.).
The federal government’s railway officer, Michael Theurer (55, FDP), has also spoken out in favor of ending the mask requirement on buses and trains. The mask requirement is certainly one of the milder means in the fight against Corona. “But we have now reached the point where it has to be recognized that we are in the endemic phase with Corona,” says Theurer.
“The continuation of freedom-restricting political measures, which fewer and fewer people are complying with because the endemic phase has begun, damages citizens’ trust in politics.”