If there was one place commuters decided they didn’t want to be with an unknown virus sweeping the globe, it was on the London Underground . Passenger numbers had already dropped while Boris Johnson was still in his shaking-hands phase, and were down by three-quarters before the first lockdown was confirmed. TfL’s Williams admits: “In the early stage of the pandemic there was a lot of messaging from the government and us not to use it – it became a fearful place.”
Numbers plunged to as little as 3% of pre-Covid levels but have recovered to almost a quarter, or 1 million passenger journeys a day. “We need to let people know that this is a controlled environment that is safe, reliable and clean.”
A publicity campaign is ready to go the moment lockdown lifts, he says, to encourage people back. “We’ve got this concept that ‘we’re ready when you are’. We’re hoping to remind people what they have missed about this fantastic city.”
While TfL has invested in active travel, he says the priority is to get people back on the core public transport network. “If you don’t do that, you have a gridlocked city.”
The business plan put to the TfL board, as London tries to negotiate a further settlement from a politically hostile government, projects that tube journeys – a key source of income for TfL – will return to two-thirds of normal over the coming financial year. “But to be perfectly honest,” says Williams, “who knows?”
Active travel looked like the big winner at the start of the pandemic, with a boom in cycling and walking: numbers of cyclists at weekends were three times 2019 levels, although numbers have been only modestly higher since then.
Duncan Dollimore, head of campaigns at Cycling UK, says: “It was great to see the increase in cycling and the increase in ambition from the government last year. The vision was great – but it hasn’t really moved forward as we hoped. We don’t yet have a delivery plan, and we’re not really seeing the investment they promised.”
Some councils have, he says, ignored statutory guidance to rearrange road space, without government response. In two notable cases – Kensington and West Sussex – new cycle lanes have been removed.
The big win, he says, would be to see more people cycling for very short journeys – to school, to a station for their onward commute, or to the shops. But this needs infrastructure for potential new cyclists, particularly families, to feel safe.
Walking became the primary form of exercise during the pandemic, according to Sport England research. Mary Creagh, chief executive of walking charity Living Streets, says: “People have reconnected with walking. You’re tackling mental health, obesity, air pollution, carbon emissions, congestion – making space only for vehicles that really need it.”
Studies of low-traffic neighbourhoods have also shown lower incidences of crime, particularly violent and sexual offences. Creagh says: “In the context of the national debate we’re having about the safety of women, that’s a really important part of building back better.”
But despite the creation of more cycle lanes, and low-traffic neighbourhoods, Dollimore has a sense of opportunity missed: “We’ve never heard a government speaking so positively – but I’m frustrated by the slow progress.”
Creagh remains upbeat that pedestrians, not cars, can be at the centre of traffic debates: “Things that we thought were impossible a year ago can happen in a heartbeat. It shows we can just completely reimagine the system.”
Boarding a train at Waterloo station during last week’s rush hour. Photograph: Linda Nylind/The Guardian
Rush hour in London: ‘I always get a seat and table now’
“More staff than customers at the moment,” says the man at the ticket counter at London Waterloo station. But this is livelier than it was a few weeks ago, he adds.
Welcome to what was, until Covid, Britain’s busiest rail station, handling almost 100,000,000 passengers a year. Up on the balcony, overlooking what was once a teeming concourse, is Network Rail’s head office: but the infrastructure operator’s staff, like most, are working from home.
Soon after 9am on a weekday, only a trickle of passengers are alighting from South Western Railway’s 10- or 12-carriage trains, built to carry 1,000 people – designed with slim ironing-board seats to maximise standing space for a lost world of passengers clamouring to travel into town.
Out at Clapham Junction, an inbound South Western train appears entirely empty. At London Victoria, the sole passenger leaving her carriage on a Southern train from the East Sussex town of Lewes says she has travelled here to work. Right here, at the station, for Southern Rail.
With the next stage of the exit from lockdown only a week or so away, the situation may change fast – possibly a rude awakening for those who have continued to travel. Arriving from the West Sussex town of Horsham on Southern, Jeremy Cockcroft, a chemist at University College London, says he can’t wait for normal working life to return, after giving lectures via Zoom from empty halls. But for someone who lived the bad old days of strikes, overcrowding and delays on the route, commuting through the pandemic has been a pleasure: “I always get a seat and a table now.”
It’s easy to empathise. Returning to the tube now feels a rare treat: trains scrubbed clean, platforms spotless, seats in abundance by mid-morning. In the city centre on the Circle, Victoria and Northern lines, trains are only dotted with passengers, silent behind their masks. At Blackfriars, cleaners lurk at the top of empty escalators, ready to spray should a handrail get touched. It is so clean: the ancient moquette seating of the Bakerloo line’s 1970s trains looks less dusty now, like a pristine themed museum ride. Even the walls are easier on the eye: virtually all remaining adverts are (bar Bitcoin sellers) Transport for London rejoinders on safety and politeness.
But it remains a sad sight. St Pancras, once billed Britain’s best “destination station”, is all but empty, some of its stores closed down for good. The piano donated by Sir Elton John is taped shut; another, once located by the blank Eurostar arrivals board, has vanished. The cross-Channel train service struggles on, staff counting down to the day’s only departure to Paris. A nearby Red Cross poster consoles “You are not alone”. But try telling that, right now, to London’s few commuters.