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London TravelWatch - Risk of catching COVID after travelling on trains

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bakerstreet

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I haven’t posted this thread to ask your opinion necessarily because I don’t want it to become divisive. However if your view is based on fact I’d be interested to hear it. I ask because I was interested in this email I received from London TravelWatcb today


Hi BakerStreet

  • The rail industry is refusing to publish its data on the risk of catching Covid on a train from other passengers
  • It even holds secret data which predicts how many people might be expected to die of Covid in the next few months after travelling on the train.
We think passengers have a right to see that information

This is especially important as many people’s lives have started to feel a bit more like normal and increasing numbers of passengers have been returning to public transport since the last phase of unlocking took place on 19 July. This is set to continue next month as people return to return to work and school but we understand that many of you may still feel nervous about returning to public transport.

As the Government stresses the importance of personal responsibility and encourages us to make our own decisions when it comes to managing the coronavirus risk we think it is really important that passengers have all the information they need to make an informed decision about whether or when to travel by train.

But despite launching a campaign to get people back onto the train this week, the rail industry is being far from transparent with the public and is keeping data on the risk of catching Covid on a train from passengers. You can read about it in the Telegraph.

Tell us what you think!

We’ve repeatedly asked the rail industry to release their data on the risks of catching Covid on the train, so that passengers can make an informed choice about whether to travel. So far they have refused so we would really like to hear from you if you are a rail passenger who is concerned about this. Your feedback will help us to decide how best to keep up the pressure on the rail industry and encourage them to publish their secret data.

We think that he only way that the rail industry can rebuild trust with passengers is by being honest. I hope you agree.

Thanks
 
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yorksrob

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This is presumably the same data that the RSSB were talking about ?

I suppose it would help to open up this modelling to scrutiny if it were published, although why people think they're going to be any more at risk of catching covid on a train than any of the other indoor settings we're going into is beyond me.

Incidentally there was someone calling themselves Travelwatch a few years ago who was the twentyfirst century version of the roads conversion league. I presume this isn't the same organisation ?

I think that for me, the key fact is that if you've been double jabbed and don't have any immuno-deficiency conditions, then you're extremely unlikely to die of COVID whether you catch it on the train or anywhere else.
 

bakerstreet

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This is presumably the same data that the RSSB were talking about ?

I suppose it would help to open up this modelling to scrutiny if it were published, although why people think they're going to be any more at risk of catching covid on a train than any of the other indoor settings we're going into is beyond me.

Incidentally there was someone calling themselves Travelwatch a few years ago who was the twentyfirst century version of the roads conversion league. I presume this isn't the same organisation ?
I think London TravelWatch is the old London Transport Passengers Committee but its had numerous renaming as the political landscape surrounding it changed
 

Ediswan

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Incidentally there was someone calling themselves Travelwatch a few years ago who was the twentyfirst century version of the roads conversion league. I presume this isn't the same organisation ?
Goggle came up blank on that. But it did find the Railway Conversion League.
 

Bantamzen

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I haven’t posted this thread to ask your opinion necessarily because I don’t want it to become divisive. However if your view is based on fact I’d be interested to hear it. I ask because I was interested in this email I received from London TravelWatcb today
This seems odd because just recently a study found that the were no traces of covid in stations or on trains.

No Covid traces found in railway stations or trains - BBC News

Tests have found no traces of Covid-19 in swabs and air samples of four major railway stations and intercity train services, Network Rail has said.
Two lots of testing took place at London Euston, Birmingham New Street, Liverpool Lime Street and Manchester Piccadilly station.
Heavily touched areas such as escalator handles were swabbed, while hour-long air samples checked for airborne virus.
Tests were repeated on trains running between the stations.
There has been extra cleaning of transport services throughout the pandemic to protect against the virus spreading through contaminated surfaces and the air.
Imperial College London researchers examined the results of the tests - which took place in January and June - and found no coronavirus contamination of any surface or airborne virus particles.
So really what you should be asking is do this group have any evidence this study is incorrect?
 

PeterC

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The way that the second line is phrased would have me checking the message headers to make sure it wasn't spoofed.
 

Bertie the bus

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I haven’t posted this thread to ask your opinion necessarily because I don’t want it to become divisive. However if your view is based on fact I’d be interested to hear it. I ask because I was interested in this email I received from London TravelWatcb today
I’m unsure what facts you are after because there aren’t any. The RSSB has done some modelling and has produced an estimate of the chances of catching COVID on a rail journey – a few months ago it was 1 in 11,000 on an average journey but might have changed now – and, from an estimate of how many will catch COVID have then estimated how many will die.

There are so many variables at play that it is impossible for them to publish anything like what London TravelWatch is calling for. Some of the variables are length of journey, type of rolling stock, number of stops, number of passengers, prevalence of COVID in the general population, etc, so they simply cannot say if you catch the 07:30 from Epsom you have x chance of catching COVID and any general overall figure wouldn’t give travellers any real information relevant to their journey.
 

Domh245

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There are so many variables at play that it is impossible for them to publish anything like what London TravelWatch is calling for. Some of the variables are length of journey, type of rolling stock, number of stops, number of passengers, prevalence of COVID in the general population, etc, so they simply cannot say if you catch the 07:30 from Epsom you have x chance of catching COVID and any general overall figure wouldn’t give travellers any real information relevant to their journey.

As far as I can tell, travelwatch are just calling for the paper/model to be released? They're not asking for detailed likelihoods for each individual train, they just want to see the model (presumably so that it can be looked at and dismissed for some utterly spectacular assumptions which don't stand up to scrutiny)

As you say, there's a whole host of factors that make accurately predicting risk nigh-on impossible, which is why it's important to understand where RSSB have plucked the possibility of triple digits of deaths from
 

Bertie the bus

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No, what they are calling for is a figure so the public can make an "informed decision". No figure the RSSB release will enable the public to make an informed decision especially when no figure for any other activity is in the public domain. How can you compare risks or make informed decisions if you are told there is a 1 in 11,000 (or whatever it is now) chance of catching COVID on an average journey (whatever an average journey is) if there is no other data for anything else to compare it with? What London TravelWatch is calling for is nonsense.
 

yorksrob

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The only way people can make an informed decision is to look at their own risk profile. Ultimately any modelled number will be meaningless becuause an individuals own vaccination status/age/health etc will be what determines their own level of risk.

Whatever modelling RSSB will have done, I suspect that it will most likely be based on the whole population and won't take account of the fact that a lot of people who are at risk will be choosing to avoid public transport anyway, so any number that comes out of the model will be meaningless to the individual.
 
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