The Mirror reports
Passengers are causing severe delays to buses and trains by continuing to poo and vomit in them, transport bosses say.
Anti-social mess, including vomit, urine and blood, is being left on buses for staff to clean.
Transport for London (TfL» ) buses alone were reported as "soiled" a total of 14,632 times in 2018.
It classes a bus as having been soiled when passengers have left vomit, urine, blood or smashed glass behind.
The article reads to me as if there is a righteous undertone that people are somehow responsible for the fouling. In many cases they may be, in some they may be the result of personal misjudgement but in other cases they might best be described as unforeseeable one-off accidents.
On a fleet of 8,500 vehicles that's 1.7 times per vehicle, or once every 210 days per vehicle.
Putting on my cynical hat, perhaps they wish to re-brand delays caused by fouling from "an unfortunate part of running a public transport facility" and now call them delays "caused by vandalism or customer action"
Delays caused by the failure to employ enough cleaners to deal promptly with such regrettable incidents could then change from "lack of spare buses/
LUL▸ trains to cope with entirely foreseeable incidents" and become a "problem caused by passengers, don't blame us !"
A really good manager charged with improving performance statistics could work wonders. If a train or bus is going to be canceled due to mechanical failure or lack of a driver, a good manager could inspect for any perhaps minor soiling and then declare the service cancelled "due to fouling"
Some incidents are unavoidable sudden medical incidents, and others result from drunken stupidity, but I believe that the total number of soiling events could be appreciably reduced by providing public toilets.
The Victorians managed this, so why cant public toilets be provided today ?
