Comment

Plenty of problems with COVID-19 - but prospects, too

Nigel Harris says the railway can help with vaccination programme.

I’VE given Government a bit (but only a bit!) more of the benefit of the doubt thus far on its biggest pandemic decisions, given its unprecedented nature and lack of previous similar experience. But there is no excuse for the ministerial carelessness/incompetence of which we see too much - not least over messaging about public transport’s COVID-19 infection rates.

On November 11, Radio 4 Today’s Martha Kearney interviewed Universities Minister Michelle Donelan about Christmas travel arrangements for students. Manchester student ‘Cathy’ reeled off a list of concerns and Kearney worked through them. I was impressed at first with Donelan’s measured, articulate, wellresearched and actually convincing answers.

And then Kearney asked about “having to use public transport”.

Donelan blew the opportunity. She waffled on about working with DfT to ease pressure on public transport by staggering travelling dates between December 3-9. Kearney interrupted to say that wasn’t her question: “I asked if they’d been on public transport at all (my italics), should they get a test when they get home?” Yet again, there was the wearisome implication that public transport is a hotbed of infection, which - as we have reported since the summer - is not the case.

Donelan’s full answer is on BBC Sounds (2.18.33), but here is its essence: “The whole point is that they have been through the period of national restrictions. Our advice says that at the end of that they will pose a much, much reduced risk to anybody else. Some will have had tests before they returned home - look, you cannot eliminate the risk, we’re in the middle of a pandemic. What we’re talking about here is reducing and managing that risk and allowing students to make a choice and have the ability to get home for Christmas.”

This is world-class waffle. Over several issues since the summer, when we first reported RSSB’s assessment of a 1-in-11,000 chance of COVID-19 infection on a train, RAIL has reported research from both France and Germany showing that infection rates on trains are less than 1%, and that even Hong Kong (one of the most densely populated places in the world, and one of the most heavily reliant on public transport) has an overall infection rate ten times below that of western Europe.

We even reported as recently as the last issue the Government’s own new £1.6 million study to research this definitively!

Considering the Treasury has been stumping up £900m a month to keep trains running, you’d think that a well-informed Government minister would seize the opportunity to make that investment count by offering reassuring truths. But this minister and her civil servants failed miserably.

Donelan could have referenced Customer Experience Director Kathryn O’Brien, who told us that TransPennine Express has increased cleaning by 70% since COVID-19 and that 57 new cleaners are being recruited as part of its £1.7m COVID cleaning policy (see Analysis, pages 32-33).

She could also have quoted GTR Engineering Director Steve Lammin, who told RAIL: “I can proudly say that we have not yet detected a single case of COVID-19 on any of our trains or on any of our stations.” GTR has 2,700 carriages.

Or how about the words of Rail Delivery Group Head of Engineering Neil Ovenden, with this discussion stopper: “Nobody has detected any residues of COVID-19 on any surfaces in any rail environment, anywhere in the country… not on handrails, escalators, door buttons or ticket machines.”

Michelle: let me have your details and I’ll send you all this. If your officials can’t be bothered to brief you properly, then maybe we should.

Like everyone else (other than anti-vaxxers, I guess), I was delighted to see the good news about the Pfizer vaccine hopefully being rolled out before Christmas. If you ever needed proof of the impact on optimism of a ‘light at the end of the tunnel,’ then this was it.

But the practicalities of administering 40 million doses of the vaccine bought by our Government is daunting: it was wise to tap into the Army’s world-leading logistics experience. Government asking local GPs to come up with lists of sports halls, warehouses and other places where mass vaccinations can be held is fine for the many millions of people who live in our larger towns and cities, but what about those in more rural communities?

This is an opportunity for the railway to perform a major act of civic duty by playing a key role in rebuilding social confidence, encouraging community and commercial activity and thereby firing up the engines of our damaged economy.

Here’s how: Network Rail is a massive property owner with 2,500 stations in every corner of England, Scotland and Wales. It has plenty of space - from empty or sparsely populated offices to larger stations with unoccupied or unused retail spaces. Why not make these spaces available as vaccination centres? I have no doubt that railwaymen and women would step up as volunteers, to help NHS and Army personnel.

Secondly, we have a fleet of recently retired IC125s in store, which surely could be recommissioned relatively cost-effectively as mobile, go-anywhere vaccination centres? You could flex the length of these latter-day ambulance trains for use anywhere from Cornwall and the South West, to rural East Anglia, north east England, Cumbria and many parts of Scotland. Seats could easily be reconfigured to create spaces where people could be vaccinated.

The vaccine needs to be stored in temperatures of -70°C and (I understand) can only be transhipped four times. I have no doubt that our freight companies could come up with a means by which containerised batches of vaccine could be hooked up to a ‘reefer’ to ensure cold supply chains - and these units could accompany the repurposed IC125s on their vaccination visits?

Trains could transfer between locations overnight and could even stable in single-line station platforms to vaccinate local populations after dark, to fulfil this life-saving function without disrupting services. I would be quite happy to be asked to report to my local station at 0230 for my COVID-19 ‘jab’.

As NR Chairman Sir Peter Hendy CBE says in News (pages 6-7) Treasury and Government both deserve congratulation and thanks for their faith in the railway, to the tune of up to £900m a month during the pandemic.

This is an eye-catching way in which the rail industry, working collaboratively, could illustrate that this has been money well spent on a nationally essential industry. Just make sure Government ministers and their officials are properly briefed beforehand…

“…you’d think a wellinformed Government minister would seize the opportunity to make that investment count.”