Coronavirus Implications For London's Transport

ianvisits is reporting this now:
TfL closes 40 tube stations, suspends the Night Tube, fewer trains and buses next week

I’d imagine the NT crews would simply pick up and stable at some point. The Northern did something similar when NT was cancelled for the emergency rail grinding - a plan was drawn up locally which listed what would happen to each and every train affected. That depends of course on there being the time and expertise available between now and then to knock something up.

As regards training, it goes without saying that this can’t be binned indefinitely as key operating staff will go out of licence. Naturally it may be possible to implement an exception for what are clearly emergency circumstances, but at some point the outstanding training will have to be caught up on.

Of course all this may well be academic in a few days. I’m sure a fair few staff, especially those living outside London, are beginning to wonder if coming to work is really sensible based on some of this evening’s news reports.

Continuous Development Programme. It’s essentially a flashy name for ATOR.

They've picked out the stations with lifts.

This morning I heard on the radio news that 40 Underground stations have closed & services reduced

Altho' not travelling at the moment I was still curious to know more - so I went to the TfL website tfl.gov.uk

Waste of time - no info about closed stations and all lines were showing 'a good service' except Circle and Hamm & City, these show a 15 minute frequency.

btw, re: the comment about closed stations all having lifts, Redbridge does not have lifts - nor for that matter does it have escalators. Its so shallow that it only has steps. Also, a comment on the Ian Visits page suggests that local people are peeved that Blackhorse Road is closed - as its an important Goblin / Victoria line interchange station.

I wonder if the stations chosen to close are partly because of local staffing issues?

I am surprised to see that the Hainault - Woodford shuttle stations are still open - especially Roding Valley!

I do hope that all these stations reopen again afterwards.

edit to add: it looks like that both I and aslefshrugged were typing our messages at the same time... but aslefshrugged finished his message before I finished mine!

The status update page shows services and stations closed: Status updates

Do you mean you're surprised that the shuttle is still operating, as opposed to the stations still being open? I don't think any of the stations on the shuttle section (from a brief glance at Google images - I've never actually traveled over this section) are sub-surface, so they won't have a minimum staffing level to keep them open.

In part at least it looks like they're choosing one out of a pair of stations to close, so that all staff available are utilized to keep the priority station open. Eg. Covent Garden closed so that staff report to work at Leicester Square, Goodge Street closed so that the staff are used at Warren Street. Blackhorse Road (if and when it actually closes) will be in order to keep Walthamstow Central open

If you don't have enough staff on a station to meet the minimum level under the Fire Precautions (Sub-surface Railway Stations) Regulations 2009 it would be illegal to open to passengers

And if you don't have enough drivers to run a full timetable you are going to have fewer trains.

Interesting to see the closure of Queensway and Bayswater. The stations are only a short walk from each other and would be a great help to leave one of them open.
Actually Queensway is still open at present.

Just hope the CCTV at Roding Valley or Grange Hill doesn't fail, Category A platforms where drivers have to have be dispatched by station staff.

There was an incident at Snaresbrook a few years ago when the station was unstaffed, the driver had to wait for either the mobile Customer Service Manager covering Leyton - Woodford or the east end Duty Response Manager.

On the Tfl website tfl.gov.uk, if you click on any of the Underground lines (DLR / Overground, TfL Rail), this will take you to a more detailed Service update screen. If you look towards the top, on the left side above the list of lines it has tabs for Lines and Stations. If you click on Stations, it will list all stations which are closed, and those that have restrictions, i.e. defective lifts and escalators. Here is a direct link for ease of use tfl.gov.uk/tube-dlr-overground/status/#stations-status

Apologies if this post seems to be very basic, as someone who has written instructions on how to use Computer software in the past, I am aware that people reading this post would have a wide range of computer (smart device) literacy, so I have written it to include all. 

I keep seeing this on social media.....

Thing is passenger numbers are way way down on what we normally see. Granted a piccadilly line train adjacent to my District train at Barons Court westbound at 6.30 this morning was well loaded, but at Earls Court at 8.30 this morning I could count the people on the platform with one hand.

Every time I looked at the CCTV on my train I could easily see lots of empty seats in every carriage.

So every time I see posts along the lines of less trains equalling overcrowding I can't help but ask........where do you think these crowds of people are going to materilise from?

That is the million dollar question at this stage isn't it?!

Nobody knows what the end game looks like......

What I'm trying to say is - it is in the interest of the people who have to take the tube to have frequent trains that are nearly empty. It's the only way to have working 'social distancing'.
Anything that forces people closer than 2 metres apart is to their detriment.