As government advice for social distancing and to travel only if essential continues further service reductions have been introduced on light rail systems across the UK. The Tyne and Wear Metro have further reduced their timetables whilst a revised service is also now running on the Docklands Light Railway and London Tramlink.
With a general warning to the public to only travel on the Tyne and Wear Metro if it is an essential journey (i.e. for key workers, essential appointments or to get food), Nexus have also reduced the service with a new emergency timetable. Having previously already cancelled all peak time extras services are now only running every 24 minutes to the outer fringes, giving a train every 12 minutes in the central area between Pelaw and South Gosforth.
Huw Lewis, Nexus Customer Services Director, said: “I cannot stress enough that the public must follow the advice: you should only travel on the Tyne and Wear Metro if the journey is essential. It is irresponsible to travel if you don’t need to. This is vital so that we can all play our part in implementing social distancing and preventing the spread of the coronavirus. Only those people classified as key workers should really be using local public transport services to get to work. Metro has a key role to play in getting people to and from work, and to get out and buy food, and for essential appointments, but please don’t travel if you don’t need to. We are following all Government advice to prevent Covid 19 from spreading and we need our passengers to follow this advice too. The frequency of Metro trains has been reduced but we will continue to provide a service for key workers and essential journeys as long as we need to.”
In London reduced services are now running on both the Docklands Light Railway and London Tramlink. Trams are running every 15 minutes on Tramlink with the DLR also running what is described as a “reduced service on all routes” although no specifics are given. The same advice as on the Tyne and Wear Mero is also given that only essential journeys should be taken.
Reduced services are also running on the Blackpool Tramway (every half an hour), Edinburgh Trams (every 15 minutes), Manchester Metrolink (every 12 minutes on each route with doubles used where possible) and Stagecoach Supertram (every 20 minutes Blue and Yellow, every 30 on Purple between 0600 and 2100 with limited services after this time).
At this time a normal service is running on both Nottingham Express Transit and the West Midlands Metro whilst over in Dublin Luas is also running to the usual timetable.