COVID-19 has not been kind to public transport. With skyrocketing unemployment and vast swaths of the workforce toiling at home, transport systems around the globe have lost vital income. The number of people using BART right now is just 11% of what it usually is in July. Up to 40 of San Francisco’s 68 Muni lines may be disappearing for good. And in the U.K., Transport for London (TfL) expects to lose £4 billion this year.
Which might be why Banksy chose a London Underground train as the canvas for his most recent work, a pro-mask message for transit riders. Yesterday, he posted a video to Instagram that showed him decorating the Circle Line train with rats who were sneezing, parachuting via face mask and clinging to hand sanitizer. He also scrawled the message: “I get lockdown, but I get up again,” referencing Chumbawamba’s 1997 single, “Tubthumping.”