Mountain Line Will Require Riders To Wear Masks Through September

A few weeks ago, the Missoula City-County Health Department officially lifted the county-wide mask mandate for Missoula... for most places, at least. When it came down to individual businesses, each one has had to choose whether to keep requiring people to wear masks or whether to simply encourage masks, but not require them.

I'm just speaking anecdotally here, but from what I've seen, it's probably about 50-50 in town. Some places that I didn't expect to lift their mask requirement actually have, but other businesses haven't - so even if you're not planning to wear your mask everywhere you go, it's still a good idea to keep it with you. You never know when you might need it to head in somewhere.

And, if you're riding a Mountain Line bus anytime over the next couple of months, you're definitely going to want to keep your mask on hand - Mountain Line has announced that it will require its riders to continue wearing masks through September 13th.

This is in line with the federal rules handed down by the Transportation Security Administration, which has extended their face mask requirement across all transportation networks, going through that date. If you do forget your mask, operators will have a limited number of disposable masks to give out.

Keeping the mask requirement for public transportation makes sense - you have a lot of people coming from all different parts of town, all getting into one confined space. Having them wear masks for an extra couple of months as everything gets back to normal may be annoying, but hopefully after September, they'll be able to put their masks away for good.