Trainline’s Crowd Alerts feature will let you know if there’s space for social distancing on trains

The feature uses crowdsourced data to determine how busy carriages are 
Guidance dictates that people should wear face masks when travelling on public transport
BEN STANSALL/AFP via Getty Images
Amelia Heathman2 July 2020

With Super Saturday just around the corner, the UK is starting to open up from lockdown (apart from Leicester, of course). With people looking to get out of their houses more, that inevitably means travel is on the agenda.

Today, Trainline is launching a new Crowd Alerts feature on its app which will help customers alert one another if it’s not possible to socially distance on a specific train. Passengers on trains can press either a thumbs up or thumbs down button to indicate how much space there is in the carriage. If they click thumbs down, they will be asked to share whereabouts they are on the train.

This data will be collected to demonstrate to other passengers if social distancing is possible. An orange bubble will come up next to a specific train in the app if the whole train is busy, whilst a blue bubble will indicate that a certain part of the train is busy.

According to government guidance, passengers should all wear face coverings on public transport but it's understandable that there may be passengers who feel anxious about being in close proximity to other people, even whilst wearing a mask. This information should help customers plan which carriage they will use or even re-plan their journey.

Speaking about the new feature, Trainline’s chief technology officer, Mark Holt said: “Helping customers safely take the train is our number on priority and we always strive to give them as much live journey information as possible. Crowd Alerts empowers our customers to share in-the-moment, on-the-ground feedback to help the wider Trainline community.”

At the start of the pandemic, train services were slashed as demand dropped overnight. In London, journeys fell by 70 per cent on the tube network. However, as people return to work and socialising, demand for public transport is increasing.

During a trial of the new feature, it was possible to socially distance on 90 per cent of trains for Northern journeys. The figures will be different, however, for the busy commuter services into the capital. According to TfL, in order to socially distance effective on the tube, trains will only be able to carry around 15 per cent of commuters.

Crowd Alerts is still in beta testing on the Trainline app, but you can access it now whether you have an iPhone or Android phone. Trainline says that as more people start to travel by train and use the Crowd Alerts feature, it will be able to make this anonymised crowdsourced data available to the rail industry and help train operators identify the busy parts of the network.

“We encourage our customers to follow government guidelines when travelling and use digital tickets on their phone wherever possible, instead of queueing in stations or touching ticket machines, to make sure that contact with others while travelling is limited,” added Holt.

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