Here's the official announcement, perhaps should switch link to this

https://tfl.gov.uk/info-for/media/press-releases/2020/march/...

This seems like the right response. For Americans who are used to driving everywhere, it is hard to state just how critical the tube is for all people to get to work. Very few people in London have cars, so shutting down the tube entirely would prevent critical workers from getting to work. Looking at the stations to be closed, it seems like a reasonable list; buses will still offer a reduced timetable to connect affected areas.

Won't this just guarantee that every bus or tram is as full as possible?

We have reduced bus and tram schedules here in my city in Poland (they now go according to the weekend timetable) and still there's not much people in them.

Tube was already running 50% full from normal. Buses 40%. People are staying at home. Me and my family have already been holed up for a week.

That wouldn't be much of a change from what the tube is like normally...

Neither any of the comments nor the article explains what TfL stands for; it is "Transport For London", basically their public transport authority.

London is already a ghost town. I went in for the last time a few days ago to ensure some colleagues could work from home. Normally the City (financial district) is packed with people, no seats to be had, streets full. Monday felt like a Sunday afternoon. I think people are starting to get the message.

With fewer trains, wouldn't that lead to more overcrowding?

In Copenhagen, the metro took the reverse action, running more trains, even outside rush hours (basically all their trains all the time). Well, that happened two weeks ago, and now no one is actually taking the metro, so maybe they have cut down since then.

I think bus companies and train companies in general took the same action, but they are also reporting an 80% drop in passengers.

Copenhagen can do this as the metro trains are automatic (no drivers, just some controllers with oversight in an office somewhere) and the stations are often not staffed.

London has to have train drivers, and most stations aren't as safe as a fairly new system.

Then have more drivers and pay them a bit extra. Train drivers are mostly isolated in their cabins and not exposed to the people much anyway.

They will eventually finish their shifts and alight at a platform; travelling as another passenger.

Average salary for a tube driver is £55k. Here's what TFL say; “The average base pay of a Tube driver is £55,011. The overwhelming majority earned total remuneration – including base pay, overtime, employer pension contributions and certain allowances – of £70,000 [$80k] or considerably less.” Always think that's interesting

That's a reasonable salary if you are expected to live (or commute daily) to London and provide something resembling a family home.

Everyone else in low and middle income bracket is just getting screwed.

As a software developer was getting paid less than a tube driver

Hence why I also mentioned buses and S-trains, which are not automated, and requires drivers. But they pulled in people, and then as the decline in passengers occurred, they starting reducing the number of vehicles in service.

While our hospitals have not been overloaded yet, the government has already been calling in any extra potential personnel to help with the upcoming strain. Like recently retired doctors, medical students, etc.

WOW. There is a sane country in Europe! Everyone else seems to either have swallowed their retard-pills, or they want to save costs and use this defective rationalization instead.

"Rush hour operation has been prolonged on all three metro lines to now run from 06 until 20.00." (normally 07-09 and 14-18)

Seat reservations are compulsory on longer-distance trains (to prevent overcrowding), although I doubt they're busy anyway.

My thoughts exactly. My local Safeway has decided to close at 9pm instead of midnight due to the health issues, which means that now everyone that would have gone later is now crowding in right before closing.

The peak tube is usually crowded to the point of you can’t get on, this week there’s photos of spare seats as they leave zone 1.

This image is from six days ago, I’d usually expect to see ~25 people in this space https://imgur.com/lUC9hO4

That's probably the immediate consequence, but not necessarily the only one: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand#Reduced_deman...

The tube is incredibly empty at the moment. I imagine it's not much of a concern

I wonder if this can be a solution to the heating problems on the older lines. I haven't done the math but a few weeks of closure or reduced service can be an opportunity for some heat exchange.

It sounds like it took many decades for the surrounding soil to heat up, so without 100xing the rate of cooling from the soil relative to the existing rate of heating I'm skeptical, given that the heating resulted from a temperature differential of likely a few dozen degrees, you would need a substantially cooler environment to cool the soil. Maybe with a massive investment you could do it by cooling the tunnels to substantially sub zero temperatures.

More info for those like me who were unaware

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Underground_cooling

Given that the trains are reported to be the largest sources of heat, the best solution in the long term will be new, more efficient trains.

New drivetrain technology is already far more efficient, producing less waste heat, than the decades-old stuff still being use on most London Underground lines.

In new trains, more powerful regenerative braking rather than friction braking will dramatically reduce heat produced from braking, for example. (It will mean less dirty air on the Underground, too!)

Thanks that was an interesting read. If the heat sink begins to dissipate are any structural risks to the network?

I can't find an online source to document this - but on a recent tour of Chislehurst Caves in SE London - the tour guide mentioned that during the second world war, when it was used as a bomb shelter for some 15,000 local residents, the heat built up inside to over 30°C very quickly. When the war ended he said, it took about 10 years for the temperature to return to it's now rather chilly 10°C.

Please don't fuel this bad reasoning - decreasing the number of trains or lowering their speed is a dangerous measure that will increase transmission!

It's the same brand of broken-mindedness that brought us the "only sick people should wear masks" and other wrong-think measures that increase transmission and make everything worse!

>the same brand of broken-mindedness that brought us the "only sick people should wear masks"

So apparently qualified health professionals having to deal with masks shortage are "broken-minded", but a bunch of armchair MD Internet commenters are correct.

If it was at the same capacity sure, but its been a ghost town (compared to normal) the last few days, so I doubt it will have a huge effect in that sense. It will also discourage people from taking the tube unless they have to (tbf they probably already were at the is point).

Well, nnq. Turns out you may have been right and owed an apology by those who downvoted you:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/mar/23/criticism-ov...

They don't have the staff due to people being off. Many of the other odd-seeming emergency measures taken or planned for in the UK have the same root cause. Even the school closures are more about staffing than reducing the spread of the virus; apparently that's a useful measure in flu pandemics because kids lack the immunity that adults do, but since no-one is immune to this as far as we know it's kind of weak here.

You make claims in italics, but you don't justify any of them.

Similar in the Netherlands with the train network, they've cut the train frequency way back and most intercity trains are no longer running, being replaced with sprinters (which stop at every station.)

As is annoyingly common with them, the English detail is rather useless:

https://www.ns.nl/en/travel-information/calamities/fewer-tra...

but the Dutch is fairly comprehensive:

https://www.ns.nl/reisinformatie/calamiteiten/vanaf-vrijdag-...

Even though this is the right response I feel this is a bit late.

It is.

It's the opposite of the right response!

How so?

You REALLY need more details or evidence with posts like that. Otherwise that may just be panic trolling.

The only thing I can see is on the BBC News website they have a line that says: "The Army is preparing to provide support during the pandemic"

Definitely doesn't sound like a lockdown.

Support includes avoiding riots and looting. Something Boris Johnson got in trouble for back in 2011 when he was Mayor of London.

I thought he only got in trouble for rioting and looting when he was in the Bullingdon club?

Also, I get the impression that the UK armed forces genuinely don’t want to be used as an emergency police force, especially after their experience becoming one in NI. (That might just be wishful thinking on my part, but it is my impression).

I'm not sure anyone who is both sane and well informed wants a group of people trained for warfighting to be deployed in a domestic policing role. Our police training includes exercises like de-escalation, and the police here are mostly pretty good at actually using those tactics to defuse potentially dangerous situations. Our infantry training includes exercises like running up to someone and stabbing them repeatedly with a bayonet while shouting "Kill, kill, kill". One of these is not like the other, and even with good intentions all around, in a tense situation the instincts are going to be all wrong.

As a comparison, we have relatively few police officers in the UK who routinely carry firearms. Certain policing organisations do, but mostly the guns and other "serious" hardware are reserved for specialist units within the regional forces. What is perhaps most telling is that the majority of our officers consistently say they don't want to routinely carry guns, not least because of the more confrontational culture it creates and the escalation of force it inevitably invites.

A long-serving police officer I used to know once opined that the only police officers who are allowed to have guns should be the ones who would honestly prefer not to, but who understand that sometimes an armed response is a practical necessity and so if called upon will see carrying and being willing to use firearms as a burden they are willing to accept to do a good job. The other side of that conversation was that in most cases, you really don't want the young officer whose main ambition is to rise up quickly and train as a specialist firearms officer to ever get that far. It was a fascinating insight into the kind of psychology that is happening underneath the use of force in different situations and the kind of mindset that is required for people with different roles in our society.

The attitude of British police towards guns is one of the things I really like about the UK.

> I'm not sure anyone who is both sane and well informed wants a group of people trained for warfighting to be deployed in a domestic policing role.

Ironically, that’s why I have more trust in the UK armed forces than in the UK government at the moment. I don’t think the UK government is either of those things. I hope I’m wrong.

support means many other things. Look at italy: military medical staff in support of civilian hospitals, military personnel helping with ventilator production, military trucks moving dead bodies from city to city where crematoriums are saturated, extra checks on the roads for people who should stay at home.

No riots nor looting.

Please don't spread FUD - people are already panic-buying enough as it is.

Is your source for this a random video on Facebook?

I overheard an army acquaintance talking about what would happen and he said something along the lines of soldiers deployed would have limited kit to be less intimidating.

Yeah they won't put troops on the streets with rifles, that's not how we role in the UK. They will be acting like police officers (who are normally not armed) if they are deployed.

From what I've heard they are going to deploy troops with weapons but only 1 magazine. Also, there is plan for deploying troops for at least 4 weeks in the pipeline along with a 4 week complete public transport suspension. Downvote my comment to zero but I have a better insight into this than this shills.

Bloody Sunday was before your time I guess ...

> Yeah they won't put troops on the streets with rifles, that's not how we role in the UK.

Apart from the 300,000 that were deployed to Northern Ireland?

That were controversial at the time and pulled out 25 years ago?

Go back to Facebook

London simply can’t fully shut down it’s transit. People who can’t work from home (like, y’know, hospital workers) need it to get to work.

But likewise, it doesn’t make sense to run empty trains every 90 seconds that nobody is using, especially when losing vast sums of money due to vastly reduced ticket revenue. And there won’t be as many staff available (self isolation, parents looking after kids due to school closures, etc).

Demand will probably be down by 90% or more next week, so even if you reduce service by 50% you still have far less crowded trains than usual.

OK. Sorry for misunderstanding London's situation. But in other places similar measures are applied while some business will continue to go on as usual.

Please look after yourself. Your many comments on this thread makes it seem to me that you are panicking

Please take a step back and a deep breath. It's going to get more tough in the next few weeks, please don't burn out now.

The trains are only still running for healthcare and other essential workers, and almost nobody is on them. London is like a ghost town right now.

Have you considered that they are taking this action to manage their diminishing staff levels? That's what the article says, after all.

Why tf would they diminish staff levels NOW?!

Train conductors are practically isolated from the passengers and quite safe.

They should increase their staff levels in these times!

When you see a large, generally well-regarded public transport authority take a counterintuitive action, a good approach is to think about which aspects of the situation you might have missed, instead of launching into offensive tirades about how everybody is stupider than you.

TfL is flawed, like any large organisation, but it is still stuffed with many subject-matter experts who are better-informed about the London public transport system than you are. It's unlikely that a broad and highly impactful decision like this is taken on a whim.

In this specific case, London's public transport network is essential to the movement of key workers. It's required in order to get medical staff, emergency services, delivery staff, and a whole bunch of other people to their jobs. The majority of city-centre residents don't have access to a car. This means that it's impractical to shut public transport down completely.

On the other hand, ridership is substantially down as a large number of people begin to either lose their jobs, work from home, or otherwise isolate – so there is less demand for transport in the first place. And on top of that, the number of available staff across the network will also start to fall as some become sick, have to self-isolate, or have to deal with childcare issues.

A reasonable approach to dealing with these main factors is to shut down less-used or less-essential stations, and then to focus on providing a more reliable cut-down core service. This relies on the understanding that it is better to have a planned, sustainable, and reliable service that operates consistently, rather than aiming to run a "normal" service which is not currently required and likely unsustainable, while cutting services or stations in an ad-hoc manner as staff availability changes.

Please just take the time to sit back and realise that not everybody else in the world is dumb, that there are often hidden factors that you don't see in any decision someone takes, and that it's often good to think (and question!) what those might be before sticking your bum oot the windae.

Could you perhaps cool down a bit? I do not drive trains. I drive buses, and must continue to do so through all this. I run a well understood risk every day, that's how it is, but constantly operating on heightened alert is noticably beginning to extract a mental toll. We really, really do not need an army of random outsiders screaming their heads off about what must be done.

They're likely not doing it on purpose, they'll be losing staff to Corvid-19 and/or self isolation.

My kids school, due to close on Friday, was planning to shutdown by year anyway as they were running out of teachers who were well. As it happens they sent home at least one year today as they had such low staffing levels even today.

Far be it from me to be an armchair epidemiologist, but I don't think it's a good idea to over-utilise your staff in such a situation. They can quite easily get infected themselves while monitoring the platforms, and pass it on to other colleagues. And then suddenly you have a real staff shortage.

You know, you can make a (perfectly valid) point without being ableist.