At the beginning of July, Government advice to avoid public transport use for other than essential journeys remained in place, and passengers are required to wear face coverings. The Transport Salaried Staffs Association joined in, with a sabre-rattling threat to ballot for national strike action if the ‘two metre’ rule is relaxed on public transport. In contrast, planes are beginning to fly again, with face coverings but without social distancing. Running an airline with 20% load factors and without government support is unsustainable.
It would be brave to predict when the crisis will be over, but unless there is early development of a fully effective vaccine this could well be sometime next year at the earliest. Even then, many people will still continue to worry about using public transport – most non-rail industry friends wouldn’t contemplate travelling by rail at present, even though services have been running with very high levels of punctuality and reliability, and the chances of coming into contact with anyone else are much lower than, for example, in a supermarket.
Department for Transport statistics for late June showed road traffic was up to around 80% of pre-crisis levels, even before the…
