The government’s Christmas transport adviser expects the Great Western Railway (GWR) to stop taking bookings for the festive period today due to a coronavirus “outbreak” among staff.
Sir Peter Hendy said people who want to book GWR trains to travel to and from the west of England for Christmas are likely to be redirected to National Express coaches from Wednesday, and indicated some rail services are likely to be cancelled.
But the Network Rail chairman said he does not envisage “terrible scenes in train stations or bus stations or elsewhere of people breaking social distance rules” over Christmas.
Hendy also said that despite talks between the UK government and leaders of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland on whether to tighten Christmas Covid rules, “the situation has been reviewed and the five day travel window is being left intact”.
But those looking to travel to and from places like London Paddington, Bristol, Cornwall, Dorset and Devon by rail face potential cancellations due to a shortage of GWR drivers.
Hendy explained that just a quarter (25%) of drivers at the Plymouth depot that were supposed to be available over Christmas will actually be able to work while there are also shortages in Penzance, as people test positive for Covid or self-isolate awaiting test results.
The problem has worsened over the last 36 hours and GWR is currently working out how best to allocate healthy drivers to services that have the most bookings.
“There clearly are in both train crew depots and indeed in the surrounding people who are running the service, there’s an outbreak of some sort,” Hendy told the Commons transport committee.
“We are seeing currently some evidence in particular parts of the country that the operators may not be able to run services that they are committed to, not because they don’t want to but actually because actually they don’t have enough staff because people have either got Covid or are self-isolating.
“GWR are not currently anticipating being able to run the service that they thought that they would and in consequence, certainly if not now, by later this morning if you do try to book an advance ticket to the west of England, I’m hoping that their website will tell you to go to National Express because actually they’re not currently wanting to take any more advance bookings.
“That’s really unfortunate but that’s not a consequence of government instruction, that’s a consequence of the transport industry not having an unlimited supply of people.”
He added: “There still will be some trains but they are right not to book people on trains they don’t think they will have any drivers for.”
Hendy also dismissed suggestions that there could be travel chaos as people try to make the most of a five day window between December 23 and 27, when three households are allowed to mix, to travel and see family.
He said that according to the latest market research, 76% of people are not planning to travel over the festive period and 80% of those who are will do it by car, and a lot of that will be on Christmas Day.
“I’m not envisaging terrible scenes in train stations or bus stations or elsewhere of people breaking social distance rules,” he said.