Posted 22nd May 2020 | 1 Comment
Railway issues Bank Holiday message: don’t travel
TRAIN operating companies and Network Rail have joined forces to issue a strong appeal to passengers over the Bank Holiday weekend: please don’t travel by train. Some services will be disrupted in any case by Network Rail engineering possessions in various parts of the country, but the Government is also still asking people to avoid using public transport where possible. Operator Northern said ‘despite this advice some are still travelling by train for leisure journeys with people spotted travelling to the coast and other picturesque areas for days out’. Regional director Chris Jackson added: ‘The rail industry is working hard to provide the best possible service for key workers and those who need to make essential journeys – and we need everyone else to stay away from the railway to leave space for those who need to travel.’
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Jez Milton, Manchester
My God. The level of delusion is unbelievable. You don't need to pretend that people are avoiding trains because they're being asked to! Demand for rail travel has plummeted to 1% of a year ago because Brits are afraid of cv19, and public transport is seen as somewhere people catch cv19.
Is that so hard to grasp?! Please stop spreading the myth that nurses use trains to get to work. 0.01% would be my guess. One in ten thousand. I've watched 6-car trains arriving at University station, adjacent to the huge QE hospital complex. Zero passengers off. Zero passengers on. But local roads are full of parked cars.
Everyone associated with the railway needs to recognise the glaring reality: there is no point running empty trains, as is happening with huge, unaffordable government subsidies, currently.
Accept that lines need to be mothballed. Rolling stock stored. Workers made redundant.
Only by recognising reality can the railway fight back from this.