Coronavirus: Translink boss says so many drunk and drugged passengers piled into small station they were in danger of being crushed

There were so many drunk and drugged-up youngsters at one Northern Irish railway station on Monday that there was a danger of people being “crushed”, Translink’s chief executive has said.
Two young women enjoy a dip at Helen's Bay on Tuesday - when the beach was a far cry from the crowded scenes reported by police and Translink on MondayTwo young women enjoy a dip at Helen's Bay on Tuesday - when the beach was a far cry from the crowded scenes reported by police and Translink on Monday
Two young women enjoy a dip at Helen's Bay on Tuesday - when the beach was a far cry from the crowded scenes reported by police and Translink on Monday

Chris Conway was giving evidence to the infrastructure committee at Stormont late this morning, at which he described the situation facing staff at Helen’s Bay in north Down on Monday.

There has been a reported increase in numbers of people visiting parks and beautyspots in recent days due to the uncharacteristically-hot weather – despite a PSNI plea not to go to places which are proving popular with visitors due to the coronavirus risk.

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Mr Conway told MLAs: “To use Helen’s Bay as an example, as soon as we were aware there were large gatherings there, that may want to use public transport on the return, we deployed staff to the area.

“Helen’s Bay would be an unmanned halt. We had over 12 staff there by lunchtime on Monday, and those staff then started work with PSNI to put measures in place as to how we were going to get public transport addressed.

“We immediately doubled our capacity on the rail network, and we also put a number of special trains on as well.

“But it was very clear that a lot of these young people were vulnerable young people. There was a lot of drink and drugs taken.

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“They were very difficult to control, even from a PSNI perspective.

“A lot of them were starting to queue and gather at the halt and were putting themselves into risk primarily either of crushing or falling on the tracks, for example.”

They eventually cleared the area, and Mr Conway said “we removed 1,400 people from that area in the space of a few hours – that just shows the extent of the difficulty we had”.

He added: “I don’t think this is going to be the last time we see this unfortunately.”

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He said a lot of staff had put themselves at personal risk, and added that they will introduce are “safe zones” for conductors “if they feel uncomfortable with the situation they can put themselves into a safe space and stay there”.

Giving a general overview on the transport network during the Covid crackdown, he said: “We’re only carrying about 10% of our normal passengers.

“And probably up until now we’ve only been carrying about five percent of our normal passengers.

“And a lot of those would’ve been essential travel, so a lot of them would’ve been free travel – so our revenue is next to nothing at this point in time.

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“We’ve got about 80% of our rail network and Metro network in place, and about 60% of our Ulsterbus network. That’s been able to cope with the demand very well, and we’ve been able to maintain social distancing on our services.”

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