How Would Opening Crossrail Affect The Covids In London?
There seems to be very little on the Internet about this, that I can find, Partly because if you search for Crossrail and Covid-19 you get lots of articles about how the virus is delaying construction.
These are a few of my thoughts.
The Class 345 Trains
Crossrail’s Class 345 trains are 205 metres long and can hold 1500 passengers.
- The passenger density is 7.3 passengers per metre, but the trains have three doors per car, as opposed to others like the Class 700 trains, which have a similar passenger density and only two doors.
- Would the space and the wide doors, make social-distancing easier at all times?
- I’ve ridden these trains several times during the pandemic and their full air-conditioning for the tunnels, would surely be ideal to help keep the trains free of the virus, by changing the air regularly.
- The trains are walk-through, which means you can walk-away from someone who looks dodgy.
There will probably be some better trains to reduce the spreading of the virus, but I doubt there will be that many.
The Stations
I’ve only been in two Crossrail stations.
These are pictures taken in the Woolwich station box.
And these pictures were taken inside the Canary Wharf station box
Note.
- I think we can assume that the platforms and associated station tunnels are not small.
- All underground platforms will have platform edge doors.
- The stations will be fully air-conditioned.
- Both picture sets were taken in 2013.
Will passengers be safer and less likely to contract the virus compared to the cramped stations of the Central Line?
Crossrail Will Increase Capacity On London’s Rail System
Crossrail will add nearly twenty per cent of extra capacity to London’s East-West rail network.
That will have two major effects.
- More passengers will use rail transport, rather, than buses or their own cars.
- There will be more space, that will make social-distancing easier on rail journeys.
I can’t see either increasing the spread of the covids.
Will Passengers Who Can, Swap To Crossrail From Other Lines?
Consider.
- The Central Line will have interchanges with Crossrail at Stratford, Tottenham Court Road, Bond Street and Ealing Broadway.
- Stratford and Ealing Broadway currently takes 52 minutes on the Central Line and will take 27 minutes on Crossrail.
- The Hammersmith and City Line will have interchanges with Crossrail at Whitechapel, Liverpool Street and Paddington.
- Whitechapel and Paddington currently takes 40 minutes on the Hammersmith and City Line and will take 13 minutes on Crossrail.
- The Jubilee Line will have interchanges with Crossrail at Canary Wharf, Stratford and Bond Street.
- Stratford and Ealing Broadway currently takes 32 minutes on the Jubilee Line and will take 15 minutes on Crossrail.
Looking at speed alone, there will be good reasons to change to Crossrail for many.
But there will also be journeys that currently require a change will be direct because of Crossrail.
- Slough and Liverpool Street or Canary Wharf
- Woolwich and Heathrow
- Gidea Park and Paddington,
And there will be round-the corner journeys with a cross-platform interchange at Whitechapel.
Ilford and Canary Wharf currently takes 33 minutes and will take 17 minutes after Crossrail opens.
I am absolutely sure, that after Crossrail opens, passengers will use the route for a faster journey and one because of more spacious trains and stations, a more socially-distanced one.
An Air-Conditioned Journey
The proportion of time on a typical journey in London, spent in an air-conditioned train or station will increase.
This can only be a good thing for fighting the covids.
Conclusion
It looks to my eye, that Crossrail will not increase the spread of the covids and it could be a powerful weapon to reduce the levels of the virus across London.
I think it should be opened as soon as possible.
Could Crossrail Be Opened In Sections?
Unlike some of London’s Underground lines, which were provided with below-ground turnbacks, there appears to be no turnback on Crossrail between Whitechapel and Paddington.
Compare that with the Piccadilly Line, which has turnbacks at Wood Green and Hyde Park Corner, which are near the end of the central tunnel.
Crossrail does have crossovers at Custom House, Whitechapel and between Farringdon and Tottenham Court Road, so could any of these be used to improvise a turnback.
What effects would there be if say a four trains per hour (tph) preview service were to be run between Abbey Wood and Whitechapel?
- It would allow Crossrail to test systems.
- It would improve connections to Canary Wharf.
- It would give Londoners and others a small cup of much-needed cheer.
I also doubt, it would increase the number of cases of the covids in London, if everybody behaved themselves.
It would need Abbey Wood, Woolwich, Custom House, Canary Wharf and Whitechapel stations to be certified safe to open.
- Abbey Wood station is already open for National Rail services and could surely be easy to finish and certify.
- Woolwich, Custom House and Canary Wharf are more or less independent buildings and again should be easy to open.
- Only Whitechapel looks difficult with a lot of work to do.
Perhaps the preview service should terminate at Custom House? But that doesn’t include the important Canary Wharf!
- Could trains just pass through Whitechapel station and still use the turnback? The platform edge doors would ensure safety.
- Could trains even use an improvised turnback on the Western side of Farringdon, where there is a crossover?
- As stations at Liverpool Street and Farringdon became available, they could be added to the route.
I’m sure that there’s a solution in there, that could allow Crossrail to open gradually, rather than as a big bang.
I hope Crossrail are looking at it, as the design and architecture of this railway could be a weapon in the fight against covids.
Alternative Funding Seems To Be Doing Well
I watch a couple of crowdfunding sites and they certainly seem to be still attracting funds.
I have recently invested a small sum in Cornish Lithium, as I like both the technology and history of the company.
Their round of crowdfunding is coming to an end, as they have raised £4.5 million against a target of £1.5 million.
It certainly appears that there is money for a good company in these troubled times.
The Liverpool And Hackney Puzzle
I know Liverpool well, as I was there as a student in the 1960s and now help fund cancer research in the University.
I now live in Hackney, which is a very mixed borough in London and not unlike lots of Liverpool in parts.
It puzzles me and some of the researchers I know in Liverpool, why Liverpool has a rate of the covids, which is five times higher than it is where I live.
Any Politician Who Advocates A Circuit Breaker Is Ignoring The Dynamics
As a Control Engineer, trying to control things with an on-off control like a circuit breaker is like trying to ride a bike only turning hard left or hard right.
We need to apply lots of small actions to nudge the pandemic to a safe equilibrium with the UK population.
- A small action, I would do is shut betting shops, as this can be done on-line and most are owned by big groups, so commercial damage wouldn’t be great. Some staff surely could be redeployed.
- I would also close down all religious services with more than six people. Obviously, God is working on a bigger project at the moment and is too busy to help with the pandemic.
- I would also encourage working from home where possible, as that has been shown to reduce spread.
But perhaps we need to take some serious dramatic action.
Why not release the latest James Bond film on a Saturday evening on free-to-air television? And do it worldwide, except to China!
It wouldn’t do the cinemas any good, but if they got on with the next one, if this one is any good, everybody will flock to see it.
Hull Trains Seat Allocation System
When I went to Hull recently, I used Hull Trains.
These pictures show the train as I boarded at London Kings Cross.
When I got my ticket out of the machine, I was very surprised to see the phrase No Specified Seat on the ticket.
I queried it with one of the LNER staff and they said, it will be alright and anyway, it is nothing to do with them.
When I got to the gate, I asked the guy from Hull Trains and he said, you’ll see when you get inside and something like. “Sit in any seat with a green flag!”
You can see the coloured flags on the seats in the pictures. The different colours mean.
- Green – For single travellers
- Red – Do not sit here
- Yellow – For two or more travelling together.
So I choose a window seat with a green flag on it.
Did it work?
- There were no families, but several pairs of travellers and I suspect about sixty percent of the seats were taken.
- Everybody was socially distanced and either had a spare seat or someone they knew next to them.
- At one table, I could see four guys all sitting together,
- The system deals with no-shows and leaves their seat for someone else.
Until proven otherwise, I think it worked well.
- I didn’t get allocated a seat, but I’m certain the system would work well if say some seats had been allocated by the booking computer.
- Seats could also be indicated by coloured lights.
- But as Hull Trains had only just restarted after the attack of the covids.
I had to have a quiet smile though.
My father was a master at designing production control systems and coloured cards were one of the tools in his box.
Often cards for his big customers like Belling, Dunlop and Enfield Rolling Mills were intricate and numbered creations, all produced with letterpress and his two faithful Original Heidelberg Plattern Presses.
Original Heidelberg
With the right gadgets in the chase, that held the type, they could number, score and perforate. You couldn’t do those operations with litho, in the 1950s and 1960s.
I hadn’t realised much about this side of my father’s work, until I met Ray Askew, whilst walking our basset hound. He had a basset too and on talking, it turned out he had worked for Enfield Rolling Mills and it was part of his job to source production control documents and he used to design them with my father, whose firm, then printed them!
Could This System Be Used On East Coast Trains?
East Coast Trains are another First Group company like Hull Trains, who will be running services between London and Edinburgh from some time next year.
I can’t see why they could use a developed version of this system, with tri-colour lights on the seats.
East Coast Trains will be aiming for a four hour service and I suspect they’d like people to just turn up and go, so quick ticketing would be needed. A simple app, where you said how many tickets and what train and then you just turned up in time for your train would do.
Why The Covids Are Worse In The North
Dr. Chris Smith is BBC Radio 5’s tame virologist and he talks more sense than most on the Covids.
Asked by Adrian Chiles, why the Covids are worse in the North, he made following points.
- The Covids are following a similar pattern to flu.
- Flu tends to like colder climate, so is more prevalent in the North.
- He also indicated, that because London had a bad dose of the Covids earlier in the year, London may be closer to some form of herd immunity.
If you can catch-up with what he said, it’s probably worth a listen.
Covid Humour
I have yet to hear any good humour about the covids.
Although an incident this morning at my local station was thought funny by those present at the time.
- The large lifts at the station are now limited to six passengers at a time.
- A couple of other passengers and myself, were waiting to descend, when an enormously pregnant lady appeared at the lift doors.
- She smiled and asked! “Have you got room for another two?”
- A guy in the lift, pointed to everyone and did a quick count on his fingers.
- He then said. ‘Not if you’re expecting triplets, Madam!”
We were all laughing and smiling, as we walked to the trains.
Is The NHS The Cause Of The Rise In The Covids?
I was lying in my morning bath thinking this morning and I had the heretic thought, which is the title of this post.
How many prominent people in the UK have died from an attack of the covids? There have been some at an advanced age, but generally they were suffering from something else as well!
The highest profile person to be hospitalised by the covids, has been Boris. But despite his weight and obesity, he came through it unscathed, due to excellent care in an NHS hospital!
I’m 73 now, but if I look back to my twenties and thirties, I see an optimistic, fit, slim guy, who felt he was immune from health problems. I can also only remember one of my peers at Liverpool University in the 1960s going into hospital and it was so memorable, I can’t remember what he had.
The youth of the UK, don’t think the covids will happen to them and growing up in an NHS, which has looked after their every need, when they look around them, they feel it will get them through, if they catch the virus.
So the fact that the NHS is there and got the fat Boris, through it, means that they think, they’ll be alright in the end.
Conclusion
The success of the NHS could be a factor in the rise of lab-confirmed cases of the covids.
Are other countries with good health systems, that coped with the first wave, xperiencing a second one?
Is Trump’s Recovery From The The Covids Down To His Mother?
Donald Trump’s mother was born Mary Anne MacLeod at Tong on the Isle of Lewis in Scotland.
This Google Map shows the position of Tong to the island’s capital of Stornoway.
This is Wikipedia’s introduction to the village.
Tong is a village on the Isle of Lewis, Scotland, 4 miles (6 kilometres) northeast of the main town of Stornoway on the B895 road to Back and Tolsta. The population of the village is 527 (2001 census). Fishing forms part of the local economy.
Families probably have to have granite in their genes to survive in places like that for decades.
By reputation, Highlanders are not wimps.
I have just looked up the rate of the covids in the Highlands.
The latest figure of lab-confirmed cases is 185.7 per 100,000 of the population, which compares to 617 for the whole of Scotland and 1952.4 for Manchester.
Is there something in Highland genes, that resists the covids?
Coronavirus: Can I Be Infected By Touching Surfaces?
The title of this post is the same as that of an article on The Sunday Times.
The article is worth reading.
These two paragraphs some up the latest thoughts on infection from surfaces.
Monica Gandhi, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, told the US science website Nautilus that there had been “a lot of fear” at the beginning of the pandemic about transmission of the virus if people touched their faces after contact with metal, plastic or other contaminated surfaces, collectively known to scientists as fomites.
Yet the evidence suggests that the virus on most surfaces is not strong enough to make people ill. “It’s not through surfaces,” she added. “It’s from being close to someone spewing virus from their nose and mouth, without in most cases knowing they are doing so.”
I travel around the Underground a lot and I’m always masked, when I enter stations and usually use the hand-sanitisers, at least once on a trip. Most in London, seem to be acting similarly.
There has been no scares about using the Underground because of high-rates of the covids in recent months, that I can find.
More importantly, under a sub-title of Why Are Young Women The Targets Now?, this is the first paragraph.
The disease that ravaged care homes and turned the elderly into hermits for much of the spring has taken aim at different targets this autumn. Public Health England’s most recent statistics show that the 20-29 age group has had the most new cases since the end of June, followed closely by the 30-39 age group. In both those groups, more women are being infected than men.
This is paragraph is from the NHS web site.
Reported cases of coeliac disease are around 3 times higher in women than men. It can develop at any age, although symptoms are most likely to develop: during early childhood – between 8 and 12 months old, although it may take several years before a correct diagnosis is made.
Could this paragraph partly explain, the fact that women in their twenties and thirties are suffering from the covids?
Coeliac disease affects one in fifty of the population.
As a coeliac, it’s no hard task to stick to a gluten-free diet.
And I get the bonus of being 25 % less likely to suffer from cancer, according to peer-reviewed research from Nottingham University.
The Anonymous Widower 