Coronavirus Implications For London's Transport

TfL are indeed already taking precautions;

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-51822317

Until today its been pretty much business as usual during the peaks but noticeably less busy in the off peak. Tonight my train left White City around 4:40pm going east, all the way through the "pipe" it was really quiet - although that could be because its Friday and people have used the virus as an excuse to have a long weekend.

I you ever wanted to see "Hamilton" or book a table at the Chiltern Firehouse then this might be the perfect time.

As one perspective, the bank I work for has about 5,000 people in Canary Wharf. A back up site outside London which sits permanently ready with 600 seats was activated as of a week and a half ago. It is only reachable by car or rail practically from central London.
Businesses that have seats there have split their staff three ways. One third there, one third in CW and one third working at home. Of the 3,000 not in the above, 1500 are formally working at home. The balance are still coming to the office some days, working at home others. Many clients only want meetings via audio or video as well.
Testing shows everyone in Europe at the bank can work from home without server capacity markedly degrading. More server capacity was added this week with a failsafe to prioritise who gets 'load shedded' if there is a server outage or similar.
I manage a team of about 250 and the feedback from them is that it will be hard to go back to commuting five days a week when this ends. We are doing many team calls by video conference and at the click of a button our office phone rings on our mobile or home phone as we want. Same when we want to call someone. Click a button on my workpc and my mobile rings, as does the phone of whoever I am calling. That is some Cisco app called Jabber I think.
One of my team is flying to Brazil on Sunday and will work remotely London hours for the next month and visit her parents. Another chap has gone to his home in Yorkshire. Others are planning similar.
Will be interesting to see the long term effect of this on commuting.

Significantly muted flows at Heathrow Airport this week, most weekdays have the feel of weekends according to colleagues. The 8AM and 4PM peaks mainly catering for transatlantic flights have all but fizzled out.

Passenger levels have dipped this week by around five percent through the airport as a whole according to initial statistics. The airports view is that several airlines operations are unsustainable with such suppressed demand and “scaling back of operations over the next three months is inevitable”.

We have been told not to develop staffing plans for flow increases for major sporting and music events in the Summer on the “highly likely probability that these will be deferred or cancelled altogether” from the DH&SC.

As a commuter who works from home much of the time, I’m less convinced that it is a bad thing.

Unlikely as a reduced timetable would require a revised duty roster which would have to be published with 28 days notice.


I've got my duties for next week, normal "WTT70" duties, if they change I'll let you know.

The Central line won’t need planned peak cancellations- trains are already cancelled every day!

There is also another angle. While the forum doesn't discuss politics, it is factual that the London Mayoral Election has been postponed by a year. Polls indicated a large lead for the incumbent, as per a recent press article (Evening Standard last week).
An politician returned or newly elected with a large majority can front load some painful decisions on things like finances and taxes and spending at the start of a new term more comfortably than one having an extra year of campaigning ahead.

That ain't gonna happen.

Meanwhile one of my colleagues was changing ends at West Ruislip this evening, went upstairs to have a PNR/make a cup of tea and was told that the train crew acco was closed for a deep clean.

There may be trouble ahead...

At the maintenance depot I work at, everything is business as usual, there's one person who is self isolating as per health guidance. Overall there shouldn't be too big an impact with trains being being prepped and maintained, worst case they'll have to loosen the purse strings and call people in for overtime.

Christmas and other bank holiday timetables are published 28 days in advance, we've had the Easter 2020 duty sheets for a couple of weeks.

As long as staff and trains are available, I would imagine it desirable to maintain a frequent service. There may be fewer passengers but they will have more space to spread out and do the 'social distancing'.

I can’t speak for LU in particular but from my own experience in Transport Operations all this would do is aid resilience planning whilst not adversely affecting the service in terms of crowding. The saving in overheads with regards to infrastructure may count towards something but like you say, the payroll is still fully active.

The forecasts seem to have been bang on, 20% dip in Tube usage mostly stemming from the off peak and 10% dip on the buses. Revenue is predicted to fall short by £500-750 million over the course of this summer.

The main value of running a reduced service would be to reduce uncertainty arising from people unavailable, either directly through drivers not at work, or indirectly for example trains not available due to maintenance staff not at work.

It’s not possibly simply to change to a Sunday service at the drop of a hat because the duties will not match up, so drivers would find themselves working possibly longer duties which means working over contracted hours, plus there’s the 28 days notice situation as mentioned elsewhere. The only simple way of getting round this might be an emergency arrangement offering overtime payments, but that would need to be agreed and implemented.

Given certain lines like the Central are now used to a massive list of cancellations for no driver, particularly at weekends, I think LU will struggle on for the time being. The options are essentially run the full service with cancellations as required, run a Saturday service with 28 days notice, or run an emergency service on the day with all drivers spare. People here may wish to take their pick as to which of these options is most expedient!