Transit Windsor masking policy to remain in place 'until further notice'

While mask mandates in Ontario now have an expiry date, there's no word yet on when public transportation riders in Windsor can go maskless.

The province announced Wednesday it was dropping most mask mandates on March 21, and ending remaining COVID-19 restrictions by the end of April.

And while the province has said it will keep mask requirements in place for public transit beyond March 21, Transit Windsor isn't regulated by the province, the agency's executive director Tyson Cragg said.

"Transit Windsor is federally regulated and as such, we fall under federal masking and COVID-related rules," Cragg told CBC News on Thursday. "And at this point, the federal government has not indicated any rescinding of the masking requirement for federally regulated carriers."

"So for Transit Windsor, masking will remain in place until further notice."

The province has said it will require masks on public transit until April 27, when all remaining COVID-19 measures in Ontario will end.

Cragg said that while the provincial move is a "positive" one, caution is still needed.

"I want to reassure people that transit is a safe place to be," he said. "We're going to continue to try to put the most service out there we can to make sure you can get from place to place on Transit Windsor, and do it safely."

Meanwhile, Transit Windsor is preparing to begin ramping services up to pre-pandemic levels.

Cragg said while ridership did drop during the pandemic, numbers are slowly climbing back up; currently, Transit Windsor is seeing ridership rates of about 50 to 60 per cent of what they were prior to the pandemic.

"Returning to full service won't happen until September, simply because a lot of our ridership is driven by students and we need the college and the university to be back at full attendance," he said. "So that's that's our goal right now, is really to ramp up for full service, 100 per cent service, for September."

The lifting of provincial restrictions will come more than two years after the pandemic hit.

The province's chief medical officer of health, Dr. Kieran Moore, announced the new changes Wednesday. 

"We are now learning to live with and manage COVID-19 for the long term," Moore said. "This necessitates a shift to a more balanced response to the pandemic."

However, Moore said removing the mask mandate "does not mean the risk is gone" or the pandemic is over.