Community Rail Lancashire has just published an update covering the work of the CRL team during the Covid-19 lock down period.
Richard Watts, Chair of CRL. says: “Despite living through unprecedented times, the team have been far from idle. Innovation, creativity and thinking outside the box have been the team watch words. I applaud them for the excellent work they have done which you can read as you go through this newsletter/update.”
Richard went on to say: “I have been an advocate of public transport for all my working life and even before that. I have never learnt to drive and have relied heavily on public transport to get about. I have championed public transport as a safe and more sustainable mode of transport. So, it has come as a real shock to hear the Government telling people not to use public transport. Consequently, all public transport modes have haemorrhaged users in their millions and most polls show that people will take time to feel safe again using public transport. Public transport is all about mass transport. Take that away and the environmental cost of running lots of near empty trains is clearly unsustainable and certainly not ‘green’. The way back will be very hard, but face masks are clearly one way to reassure people that they can use the system again with greater confidence. If we look across the Channel to see what the French are up to, we find that face masks are compulsory, they are booking a 100% of seats on their TGVs and all TER (regional services) are back to normal. The same applies in Germany.”