Coronavirus Implications For London's Transport

What at utterly unfortunate and avoidable position to have arisen.

At the time when we needed a fully workable and effective solution, LU management has failed to deliver one. There’s been a lingering feeling that the current collection of management simply aren’t up to the task, this simply proves those doubts. No ifs or buts they *had* to get this right, and it shouldn’t have been a challenge.

Which would be a political descision and thus not for discussion.

I wonder if District line instructor operators are still taking trainees in the cab with social distancing, with implications for commissioning of SMA3. Some refresher training is probably also outstanding. Whilst some relaxations may be made, social distancing will probably be one of the last. SMA3 was supposed to start trial running in early May 2020 last I heard.

All training has been suspended, I was supposed to do CDP a few weeks ago and that got cancelled


A driver who had transferred from another line was a couple of weeks from completing their training but was sent back to their depot until it is safe to resume. Not a happy bunny... 

As Dstock7080 says, it's postponed indefinitely. Within the 4LM team we're not expecting the new date (when it's announced) to be in 2020.

Stepney Green-Monument/Euston Square

Given the trend to walk through trains 1) is impractical and how would you be at a safe distance from passengers?

As regards (1), ideally one would be seeking to lock the car out of use by isolating the doors. However, I think I’d be right in saying that isolating the doors would also include the guard’s door, so achieving it would have probably required an actual change to the train’s design. I’m guessing it would be possible for depot staff to isolate individual doors, but if done that way you’d also be losing the first car...

CP and R Stock had the ability to ‘cut-out’ the rear and near doors independently using buttons/switches on the Guards position, thus keeping passengers out of the rear car.
CO Stock of course, had the Guards controls in the cab.

The last TfL plan I saw that mentioned driverless trains, but maybe not unstaffed trains, had them starting after all new Siemens trains had arrived on Picc, Bloo, Central & W&C, when there would be an investment window before the Jubilee & Northern lines were due new trains. But the recent 25 year rolling stock plan has lost that window, with deliveries just running on if money is then available. They would need the new signalling and more such as platform edge doors, etc.

That must have been a good few years ago!  When the invitation to tender for new trains was issued in January 2016 they'd already dropped the possibility of driverless operation on the Bakerloo because they wouldn't be able to fit PEDs north of Queens Park and whole idea was pretty much dead by February 2018 when TfL announced they were facing a £1bn deficit.

TfL can't afford driverless trains, in March this year Mike Brown announced they couldn't even afford new signals to go with the new trains for the Piccadilly and after this is all over TfL is going to need a massive bailout from the Treasury just to get to it back to where it was before the lockdown.

Covid-19 isn't the last nail in the coffin, its a shovelful of earth on the lid!

Sorry, ST,  I was typing this while you were typing that...

It seems the furloughing of staff is reaching train operations. Plans to furlough a number of Trains Managers at various train crew depots. More info to follow.

I’m guessing this is merely a way of externalising the costs of those who are shielding?

I can’t see much other motivation, as whilst there are a few tasks not able to be carried out at the moment, there’s little appreciable decrease in TM workload. Indeed the opposite in many cases with various paperwork tasks associated with the current arrangements.

Some of the management grades seem slightly disproportionately affected by shielding, which is perhaps to expected as generally these grades would be expected to possess a slightly higher age profile.