The Government’s new vision for active travel landed late last month and has caused a stir that has gone much further than the usual cycling and walking policy circles.

In late March, our transport landscape changed in a way that none of us could ever have imagined as the COVID-19 outbreak and nationwide lockdown measures lead to a dramatic drop off in movement in the UK.

We’ve had the first weekend in England since the latest easing of COVID-19 and now the first working week has begun. Early signs are that public transport patronage is picking up sharply but it’s too early to say at the time of writing to what extent this will stretch the capacity of public transport which is already heavily constrained by social distancing.

Over the last few months, my job has looked drastically different to what went before. The Urban Transport Group has turned its attention to supporting its member network of city region transport authorities to respond to and manage the coronavirus crisis.

Not all the details are clear at the time of writing but we do now have a funding support package for light rail and buses to see us through the next three months.

In the last week we have been sharing across the UTG network about how best to safely operate public transport networks where demand in some cases is already bumping up against, or exceeding, its socially distanced capacity.

This is as tough as it gets for public transport. The Government’s decision to trigger a restart last night (Sunday), that begins this morning, has run ahead of the guidance on how public transport should respond.

As we enter week seven of the lockdown, the challenges of preparing for a restart remain daunting. It’s hard to plan a public transport restart when at the start of the week we don’t know the phasing or the timing of any lockdown release; what the rules will be on social distancing or PPE; and whether there will be a coordinated national travel demand management exercise or not.

As we enter week six of the lockdown, the country is now turning its attention to when and how it should begin to be released. If the lockdown period was difficult for transport authorities to respond to - then the start-up could be harder still.