Call to cease social distancing on trains beyond summer
TRANSPORT Select Committee Chairman Huw Merriman has called for all social distancing requirements to be lifted for rail travel once the Government’s Coronavirus vaccination programme has been completed.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has pledged that all UK adults will be offered their first dose of a vaccine by the end of July, while all legal limits on social contact - including the closure of hospitality venues - could be lifted in England by June 21.
Before reopening the final closed sectors of the economy, ministers are due to conduct a review on longer-term measures to reduce transmission - including a possible continuation of the ‘one metre plus’ rule and the wearing of face coverings in some settings.
Merriman (pictured) told RAIL’s National Rail Recovery Conference that any distancing measures should not be imposed on rail beyond the summer, owing to the low risk of transmission on trains.
He argued that social distancing and the limits it would place on capacity would also be unhelpful at a time when the industry should be trying to encourage passengers back to the network.
He said: “We have to grasp the message that rail travel has been safe and continues to be safe during COVID-19. This will be really important to the future, because the two metre or one metre plus social distancing rule will not work when we get everyone vaccinated and back to usual.
“I’ve long taken the view that with public transport being safe and the deep cleaning going
on, then there is a question of whether it is not better - with a vaccinated UK population - for us to get people back on rail in instances where we can’t socially distance. That has to be better than not getting people back onto rail at all.”
Merriman also expressed regret at the Government’s decision to discourage people from using trains during the pandemic, and the resultant widespread perception that the network is unsafe.
This was reinforced on
January 18 when a new national Coronavirus advertising campaign was launched that included the slogan “Coronavirus takes the train too” ( RAIL 923).
Merriman said this was “a shame”, when such messaging was not adopted by other countries and when it was not supported by scientific data.
He pointed to research from the RSSB last summer that estimated the risk of contracting
COVID-19 onboard a train to be just 1-in-11,000, as well as a French study that found fewer than 1% of transmission clusters came from land, sea or air transport.
It also seemed to contradict the view of Rail Minister Chris Heaton-Harris, who had himself told the TSC in November that “rail is unbelievably safe”.
Merriman added: “We had somebody speak to us from the transport system in Singapore, where they were very careful to ensure that they never said that the public transport system wasn’t safe. That is because they thought that once they had gone down that path it would be very hard to recover in terms of communication.
“I think that it is a fair point, and it’s now going to be a big struggle to say to people that it is safe to use the rail network. It’s a shame that it occurred because very few cases of COVID-19 have been traced to public transport.”