Part of my day job over the last 2 and a bit weeks, I along with many other colleges, have been working on the Domes Day scenarios of what to services, lines and stations to prioritise in the event of staff shortages due to Covid-19.
The plan is well developed and is in place now
I don't know if it was apparent early last year, but
the rail industry has a pandemic flu plan. It was last updated in October 2019, so someone at DRG Towers has a good, if short-range, crystal ball.
Mostly it's quite sensible, if necessarily vague. In this context "pandemic flu" covers a range of severity that includes that of Covid-19, and this plan is meant to be adapted for coping with other types of infectious disease.
The same is true for PHE's Pandemic Influenza Response Plan, such as it is. While you might expect that to deal with preparedness and coordination of other areas of society, it doesn't - it's mostly an internal PHE plan. And while it says PHE will be in contact with other bodies on public health issues, it doesn't deal with those outside the public health area. Certainly it doesn't mention railways.
To be fair though, there is
more from .gov.uk on this sort of civil contingency planning, and pandemic lfl in particular. The section on transport says this:
Transport
Public transport operators aim to run as near to normal services for as long and as far as that is possible during a pandemic and their plans provide for emergency timetables, redeploying staff and operating revised working (shift) patterns, if required. Although the government is not planning to impose closure of transport hubs/facilities in the UK▸ , all sectors may experience operational difficulties when the pandemic virus is circulating and staff absence levels are significantly higher than normal. The aviation sector may also experience difficulties if non-UK airports or airlines have operational problems or stop operating.
It then links to the DRG/
NR» plan already mentioned here.
I was looking for somewhere to put this, since it would have been ideal to have posted it around the start of the pandemic. This looks as good as anywhere.
