Sir Peter Hendy, Chairman of Network Rail and former Commissioner of Transport for London said last week that on long-distance trains and coaches there are reservation systems that can easily allocate seats. In urban areas systems won’t be able to carry the numbers of people that normally travel because of social distancing, he said.

 

This week Heidi Alexander Deputy Mayor for Transport writing in the OnLondon blog described how theVictoria Lineusually runs every 100 seconds during the morning rush hour and each train can carry 1,000 passengers or 125 per carriage. With a strict two metre radius around each of them, each carriage will only be able to carry just 21 people. Normal planning assumptions for the Tube are that four people occupy each square metre. The bus system will also come under pressure as soon as the level of lockdown is reduced. 

 

Alexander worries about the likelihood of everyone taking to their cars to avoid using public transport - as has been happening in cities that have already started returning to work. She admits it would be disastrous for air quality, carbon emissions and public health.

 

Rather depressingly she admits that as far as safe cycle routes are concerned “it’s clear we won’t have the money to do everything we want. I’ve spent much of the last two years avoiding the rush-hour crush on Southeastern trains, preferring a cycle ride to City Hall. The question is how to tempt hundreds of thousands more to do the same.”

 

Peter Hendy takes a more positive position and quotes the Olympics when London had an excess of demand oversupply, “despite all of the scepticism in 2012 we managed that for the whole summer really quite well.”

 

The Covid crisis has accelerated a number of changes in technology of which working from home is the most obvious, the digitisation of the planning system. Hopefully one other might be road use pricing - if that was in place now Heidi would be able to control traffic flows very easily.

 

The success of Hendy's Olympic story was down to cooperation with business. If employers can agree to stagger working hours - and to police their staff - that can have a deliverable impact. The Mayor and TfL need to get business onside as soon as possible. A substantial hike in the Congestion Charge for cars, taxis and PHVs would at least keep them out of the centre; the police have been active in turning back cars on unessential journeys across the country - why can’t the Met do that in London? Parents who drive should be advised to follow school travel plans.

 

As to not having money to do deliver the cycling infrastructure she wants, the provision of safe cycling and walking is as great an imperative in the year to come as many of the other public actions which are being taken to reduce the possibility of another spike in COVID19 stats. Over the next few weeks and months, authorities across London will be temporarily widening pavements and creating safe routes for pedestrian and cyclists. The Deputy Mayor should see this as a way of radically extending healthy streets policies - using temporary installations, wands, planters and paint to provide improvements as experiments that where they work they come permanent. When Janette Sadiq Khan was New York’s transport commissioner she delivered hundreds of miles of bike lanes in this way which costs pennies in comparison to almost every other spending category in the DoT.

 

COVID19 provides opportunities as well as problems  - we need a radical and innovative approach to keep the city moving and build back better for the future.