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London’s Tubes and buses set to run weekend services as coronavirus forces people to stay home
LONDON'S Tubes and buses are set to run on a weekend service from now on as the public stay home over coronavirus fears.
Mayor Sadiq Khan confirmed today that Transport for London will slash services to try and avoid running ghost trains around the city.
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But he won't shut down the system altogether.
He said this morning: "What I don’t want to do is turn public transport off which means nurses, doctors, essential workers can’t reach their place of work."
And he added: "Unless it’s for essential reasons, the advice is not to use public transport.
"I’ve realised that many of our nurses, doctors and professionals in the NHS firefighters have to use public transport to get to and from work.
"Today it’s a regular service in transport for London, over the course of the next weekdays we will reduce that probably to a Saturday/Sunday service.
"And we will reduced it again depending on what the demand is."
Yesterday TFL said there was a 19 per cent drop of Tube passengers and 10 per cent fall in bus users in the first week of March, as Londoners started to stay away from the capital or work from home.
It also said there was a "significant reduction in visitors to London" in the last few weeks as fewer people decided to travel to visit Britain.
Their current predictions if that there their income could be slashed by around £500million.
But at the moment TFL are confident that their cash balance is enough they will be able to handle it.
If they can't, they will be forced to beg Boris Johnson and the rest of the Government to provide "appropriate financial support" to help them get through the crisis.
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London’s Transport Commissioner, Mike Brown MVO, said today: "We and our staff are doing everything we can to ensure that people who need to make essential journeys can continue to do so.
"Part of that involves matching service levels to the actual demand for travel. That work is underway and will evolve over time.
"In the meantime, we have upped our cleaning regime on the transport network. Everyone should follow the advice of Public Health England to ensure they are doing everything they can to stay safe and limit the spread of the virus."
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