London’s Tube is fighting to stay on track

LONDON (AP) – When London came to a standstill when a nationwide coronavirus blockade was imposed a year ago, the tube continued to run as an essential service. But it was a strange and nerve-racking experience for his employees.

Joseph Cocks, a driver on the Circle Line of the metro that runs through the city center, said he could “count the number of people who boarded the train on one hand.”

“It was shocking and surprising to see it on a Monday morning rush hour, to see almost no one,” he said of the system opened in 1863 popularly known as the Tube.

Its continued operation was a sign that even during a pandemic, the heart of London was still beating.

Plague, burn, war – London has survived them all. But it has never had a year like this. The coronavirus has killed more than 15,000 Londoners and shook the foundations of one of the world’s largest cities. As a fast-moving mass vaccination campaign holds the promise of reopening, The Associated Press looks at the impact of the pandemic on London’s people and institutions and asks what the future holds.

In a city where almost half of the households do not have a car, public transport keeps economic and social life moving. Before the nationwide lockdown on March 23, 2020, approximately 5 million trips per day were made on the metro. The iconic map, reminiscent of a multi-colored printed circuit board, is both an emblem of the city and an essential resource for residents and visitors alike.

In the early weeks, when most Britons were told to stay at home and fears surpassed the facts about the virus, underground workers continued to work but worried about getting sick.

“We were not sure how bad it was,” said Cocks. “There were concerns about how dangerous this job was, and you would hear stories about people in the Underground contracting the coronavirus. So we didn’t know how quickly it spread and how safe we ​​were. “

COVID-19 has taken its toll on Transport for London, which operates the city’s metro, suburban train and bus network. At least 89 TFL employees have died from the coronavirus, most of them bus drivers, whose death rate is three times the national average, according to a study by University College London.

The virus has hit people hardest in public jobs, and the death toll among ethnic minorities is higher than among their white compatriots. The reasons for this include jobs, underlying health problems and economic inequality.

About a third of the TFL workforce is ethnic minority, partly a legacy of the thousands of people from Britain’s former colonies who came to the UK after World War II to support an exhausted workforce.

Brian Woodhead, the Underground’s director of customer service, says the network has acted quickly to protect personnel and passengers. Masks are mandatory, hand sanitizer is plentiful, escalator handrails are irradiated with virucidal ultraviolet light, and one-way systems reduce jamming in station corridors. In buses, drivers sit in closed cabins.

“As much as anyone can in the circumstances we find ourselves in now, I think the Tube is a safe environment,” said Woodhead.

He cites a recent study from Imperial College London, which tested the virus on surfaces and in the air with the tube and found none. This is partly due to people like Ivelina Dimitrova, who supervises 20 cleaners at the busy King’s Cross, among other places. She and her crew – mostly immigrants from Eastern Europe, Africa and South Asia – regularly spray surfaces with hospital-grade disinfectant.

“We had to change our work routine and everything, and (had to) do it quickly,” when the virus arrived, she said, adding that they felt constant stress about getting infected.

Now she said, “We have strong morale because we believe we should do what we can do to keep ourselves safe, our families safe, other people around us safe.”

Passengers who previously paid little attention to cleaning staff now stop to thank them, she said.

The pandemic has left the world’s oldest metro system facing an uncertain future. The Tube, which relies heavily on ticket revenues, is facing a money crisis. Passenger numbers dropped to just 4% of pre-pandemic numbers early in the outbreak and now carries about a quarter of the passengers it did before the outbreak.

During a recent rush hour, a trickle of passengers stumbled through the ticket gates at the usually crowded Victoria and King’s Cross stations, past posters reminding travelers to wear face masks and wear ‘Be Kind’ against each other.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has put the country on a slow path to get out of the lockdown, with hairdressers and shops set to reopen April 12. But people are still advised to work from home when they can and only take the metro when needed.

His government has given Transport for London about 4 billion pounds ($ 5.6 billion) in grants and loans to keep it running, although it will run out of money on May 18. Talks about funding have been clouded by bitterness between Johnson’s conservative government and London. Mayor Sadiq Khan, a member of the Labor Party.

Woodhead expects the number of riders to increase, but “whether that’s 18 months or 36 months” is difficult to predict. And the pandemic may have changed travel patterns forever, with more walking and cycling and less commuting during rush hour.

In December, an independent report commissioned by TFL and the mayor said a “credible” prediction was that public transport demand would decline by 20% as a result of “travel changes and economic weakness” after the pandemic.

“People, I very much doubt, aren’t going to commute five days a week,” Woodhead said. ‘Some people will. But there will now be many people doing it in a hybrid way. That’s definitely going to happen, which on the one hand will help from a congestion point of view, but not from a revenue point of view on the other. “

Still, Woodhead is confident that the Tube will be an important part of London’s recovery.

“It’s just woven into the whole infrastructure and the way London works,” he said.

Meanwhile, drivers like Cocks will continue to do jobs that have become “a little bit more remote, a little bit more isolated”.

“It’s nice to know you keep London moving,” he said. “You do your part to make everything go from A to B.”

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