the dual challenges of keeping people
safe on public transport
and keeping public transport financially
viable
both look formidable at the moment the
uk government's advice is to only use
public transport
when there's no alternative but the
number of passengers is rising
albeit slowly we're going to hear from
travelers and what they're experiencing
in france russia
and hong kong in a moment but we're
going to start in the uk
numbers may be up but footfall last week
and the busiest stations were still
percent of pre-pandemic levels let's
hear from the bbc's transport
correspondent
tom burrage
[Music]
more services this morning but not many
passengers
nobody here is i don't know it's a pack
every day every time now you can see
nobody since the coffee 19 started right
you used to be very
very busy this area this train station
but now you see
you can see only less than about 20
people now traveling
it does stress you out um i mean i don't
sit worrying about it there's not much
you can do except try and be careful
but i mean if you think about it too
much you know it is
worrying small stations like this one in
nottingham
deserted but measures are in place to
manage
larger numbers at major stations
and on trains service to nourished
new messages please follow social
distancing advice and spread out
throughout the training
and more staff directing you around
they will also limit passenger numbers
if they judge that there's already
enough people on board a particular
train
then they might block the gates off here
and other people will have to wait for
the next
service and as well as those measures
some long distance trains
are ticket only and in the future people
may be required to book a time slot
for when they arrive at a station well
from the uk to france which two has
eased restrictions here's joe scofield
in paris a week after the end of the
lockdown here in paris the metro as well
as the
tram and the bus services are operating
at around three quarter percent
on the metro system there are still 60
out of 300 stations that are closed and
on several lines there are
fewer trains than normal but the big
change on the metro as well as the tram
and the bus
service is that capacity has been
reduced at a blow by 50 percent by the
fact
that on every second seat now there is a
sticker saying please do not
sit here because of the of the corona
virus
masks are compulsory everywhere on the
public transport system and there is
also a rule saying that if you travel in
russia
at peak times in the morning and evening
you have to have a form an authorization
from your employer saying that you have
no choice but to travel at
peak time many people were predicting
chaos
overcrowding um impossible to observe
social distancing and so on in fact it
hasn't been like that at all in fact
the numbers of people traveling on the
public transport system here
are way way down on pre
uh virus levels suggesting that many
people most people maybe
are heeding the government's advice and
continuing where they can
to work from home
well from hugh in paris to natalia
zatova
from bbc russian in moscow public
transport in moscow
has not been affected by the epidemic
buses trams and suburban trains
still depart regularly though they're
nearly empty
there are considerably fewer passengers
on the moscow meter too
though it's moscow's main public
transport system
everyone in the carriage is able to sit
down even during the rush hour
two months ago it would have been
impossible it is compulsory to wear a
face mask and gloves while traveling
you can buy these at all stations the
moscow metro was accused of selling the
protective gear at inflated prices
which it denies well our final stop is
hong kong it's been relatively
successful in containing the virus
but public transport remains a challenge
here's laura westbrook from the south
china morning post who's there
here in hong kong many people have
returned to work and the daily commute
the first thing you'll notice is that
everyone wears a mask
in fact the hong kong government has
promised to distribute
free reusable mosques to all hong kong
residents
on trains there's not a lot of social
distancing and they can get quite packed
especially during peak hours however at
train stations
handrails ticket machines and even lift
buttons are disinfected with bleach
every two hours on the trains themselves
when they reach the end of the line
staff quickly disinfect the carriages
and they're cleaned more
thoroughly overnight there's also a
robot that sprays
vaporized disinfectant throughout the
carriages
now people here are pretty strict about
their personal hygiene
at most public places there's free hand
sanitizer that people can use
however the first thing i do when i get
to work is wash my hands
now to state the obvious the issue of
public transport is not going to be
easily resolved many of the biggest
urban public transport systems
are built around the idea that people
can be crammed in
and the current easing of lockdown still
leaves us a long
long way away from being able to do that
this washington post story really cuts
to it the headline reads
subways trains and buses are sitting
empty around the world
it's not clear whether riders will
return
and as that article highlights there are
really a couple of major issues here
first and foremost how do you keep
passengers and staff safe
but by doing that inevitably passenger
numbers have to be far lower
if that happens revenues collapse and
public transport systems are reliant on
huge
and regular income streams which means
in the medium term
either national or regional governments
need to provide extra cash
or the whole thing doesn't add up and
some services may have to stop
but even if the funding is found that's
to assume that in the end
the people and the revenue will return
and that's not necessarily a safe
assumption
many of the biggest public transport
systems in the world have lost 80
percent
of their passengers some of those people
are of course at home
but others are traveling but avoiding
public transport
and truck for understandable reasons
have a look at this this is a widely
quoted study
from southeast university in nanjing
looking at the outbreaks of kobit 19 in
china
it found one third of outbreaks involved
exposure on public transport
and it concluded that being inside is a
huge
factor in most outbreaks and
also wanted to show you this from a u.s
software company this was
many studies urgently investigating how
cobit 19 can be spread in confined
spaces
and we already know enough to understand
that a packed train carriage and
is not going to be a good place to be
well all of this will have significant
consequences for not just how often we
use public transport but also how
instead perhaps we use cars bikes
scooters and so on
that in turn may well influence how we
design how we all
move around there are lots of unknowns
here however one thing we can be sure of
is that
while some elements of normal life may
be responding soon
squeezing onto a train bus or subway is
probably
not going to be one of them