Having worked (driven) trains through the lockdown across the north there are definitely certain areas and times when face covering compliance is better than others. Commuters seem pretty good at taking precautions. However a lot of people who wear them seem to think that once they’re on the train they can pull their face covering down away from their mouth and nose. In my opinion making them mandatory in shops will have a positive effect on overall carrying of them by the more casual travellers.
Bigger stations like Manchester Piccadilly & Leeds have a lot of staff enforcing walking routes to avoid crowding, giving out face coverings and trying to enforce the unenforceable.
Train use nationally is still between 10 and 20% of normal levels. And I suspect that in the south that figure is a bit higher than in the north. I have to travel on the train as a passenger sometimes to get from A to B while in work, and I have no problem with that at the moment. I’d refuse to get on a packed train but I’ve not had to be put in that situation yet.
Public transport is still meant to be for essential travel only. Once a train leaves a main station though, out in the wilds there is little that can be done. During the day, random groups of bored kids/adolescents off on a jolly appear every now and then knowing there’s not much revenue protection being carried out at smaller intermediate stations. A train I worked out of Blackpool at the weekend was full of the sort of people who I assume haven’t seen any news for six months. Mostly families who travelled all the way back towards Manchester. The other evening I saw the guard on my train have to tell four folks who turned up on MTBs at Hebden Bridge that, sorry, they couldn’t board. We already had two or three bikes on, the maximum allowed is two even in normal times, and every additional bike can make social distancing more difficult with people having to squeeze past others etc.
There’s been the odd incidence of people being assaulted at work, one or two spitting incidents etc., but most of the crime has actually been trespass the on the railway, usually the scourge of the Easter/summer school holidays.
At work we all feared the worst once the pubs opened but the late trains around the north seem to be generally quiet for now.
Our company is still running what can basically be compared to a Sunday service.
It’s strange because we know the whole rail industry is on life support and nobody knows how long redundancies will take if passenger numbers don’t return in the next year or so. There’s certainly nowhere near enough business to fill three Pendolinos per hour between Manchester and Euston. At the moment there is still recruitment and training going on at my firm. All the TOCs are all but nationalised (my own employer was officially taken into public hands a month before the lockdown anyway due to dire performance) but there’s no way the passenger train operating companies can revert back to their previous commercial setups, half of them were on the verge of going bust/handing the keys back anyway.
