Train and tube strikes

[uneffingbelievable]

I can not work from home and my job is fairly essential.

To get to work next week - I have now along with many of my colleagues had to:

1. Book a hotel on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday nights
2. Pay for parking at the station for 4 full days
3. Organise extra child care and a taxi to pick DCS up from school ( too far to walk and no bus)
4. Will have to pay to eat out for those days

If the rail unions had not noticed we are ALL facing a cost of living crisis - wasting the best part of £500 to get to work is not endearing me to your cause.

The alternative of drive in and out each day in the traffic and pay for parking in London and then walk miles comes in at around £350 and exceedingly high BP.

Your actions are selfish beyond belief and hurt the innocent hardworking majority.

That is the polite version - selfish beyond belief

I keep seeing this claim but it bears no relation to what I see actually on trains. "Full and standing" all over the place. Maybe things are quieter in the south east, but why should the rest of us have our services cut?

According to google and newspapers, signallers in various areas walked out in 2006 and 2011 at least.

Some of the names on this thread really surprise me.
people who normally talk sense spewing regurgitated daily mail bollocks.
there are some jealous petty selfish people and I'm not talking about the strikers.
I'll be walking for one day because of the strikes and if I were allowed I'd join their picket in solidarity.

Who's going to run the trains if you do that? It's bad enough having a week's disruption, without abandoning most of the service for more than a year while you train up replacements.

Lol you'd rather spend 500 quid instead?
Book the leave and go off to Amsterdam. Seems like you could do with some 'chill' time.

I was talking specifically of a company-wide strike. I don't think the 2006 one went ahead in the end, and the 2011 one was confined to one signalling centre in Glasgow.

@DdraigGoch Nope public transport in the South is very much busy and packed during rush hour. It's normally ignorant WFHers assuming that the majority of people are WFH like them when they haven't actually stepped onto public transport since 2020 and witnessed the level of commuters.

It was my post your reply is quoting. Feel free to dismiss me as an “ignorant WFHer”, but I use public transport every day. I also work with public transport data every day at work. It’s not a claim that patronage hasn’t recovered to pre-covid levels, it’s what the ridership evidence shows. In many areas timetables have reduced, so of course trains are busy, there are fewer of them. The SE isn’t my patch but afaik TFL are having a slower recovery than other light rail networks, and I’d be quite surprised if the likes of SE, Southern and FCC are doing anything drastically different to trains in the rest of the country.

Absolute wankers, can’t wait until the whole system is automated

Perhaps if there were more strikes there wouldn’t be a cost of living crisis

It's funny how on one hand people complain about fuel & wages & energy etc but we are such a compliant nation

Perhaps if there were more strikes there wouldn’t be a cost of living crisis

it would get worse

I would just drive, we always drive everywhere and never take the train so couldn't really care about the strikes.

So Shapps is talking bollocks? Quelle surprise

FCC hasn't existed in years. It's all now wound up in the Govia Thameslink franchise.

The footfall through Liverpool Lime Street in March 2022 is 17% above March 2019. The timetable where I live is essentially back to where it was before the pandemic. TfW services frequently leave passengers behind on the platform because there's no room onboard.

Elsewhere, Northern and TPE services are often full and standing. Crosscountry is a crush as it always was. Avanti and GWR run 9/10/11 car trains over long distances which still have issues with overcrowding.

I agree OP. Strikes always adversely affect the people who can’t do anything about it anyway.

The sooner these cushy overpaid jobs are automated the better.

If they're so cushy and overpaid, have you put your application in? If not, why not?

For the umpteenth time: it's not the drivers who are on strike. RMT represents everyone from signallers to cleaners.

And any talk of automation or hiring agency staff clearly comes from those who are not in touch with reality (Shapps being the chief dreamer).

How will the job of the station guard who assists disabled people on and off the train be automated? How will the cleaner’s role be automated? How will the ticket inspector and buffet car roles be automated? Just a few examples.

Wheelchair ramp can easily be automated like on buses. Ticket inspector not needed if there's barriers at every station (with a help button in case your ticket doesn't work but 1 person to employ instead of 100's). How many people actually need the buffet car? Didn't realise they even still operated!

Cleaners - yes, still needed.

Whatever my opinion on the reason for people striking, I feel your pain OP, I used to travel 30 miles on the train 5 days a week, on a job I couldn't work from home and it was an absolute nightmare.

Even though the reason they are striking is very valid, and it is meant to be disruptive, it does not mean that those who are the collateral damage don't have the right to be upset or annoyed at the fact they are inconvenienced/could find their own jobs or monetary situation as a result of this.

Does a machine help a disabled person out of the carriage, onto a ramp, pick up their luggage and then escort them to a lift?

Tickets don’t always scan so what happens if you can’t get through a barrier?

Of course buffet cars still operate.

You can’t replace cleaners with a machine, as you’ve acknowledged.

To elaborate on my point about barriers (I typed too quickly!), I’ve often had problems scanning my ticket and when I’ve reached a station at peak time, many other people have had problems too. One employee wouldn’t be able to deal with this.

Does a machine help a disabled person out of the carriage, onto a ramp, pick up their luggage and then escort them to a lift?

As someone in a wheelchair people don't do that all the time either. don'tget me started about having to book it in advance only to turn up and there is no one there and when you ask about it they couldn't care less.

I’m sure you’re right, and I wouldn’t want to be in that situation, but my point is that if you automated all jobs, there would never be anyone there to assist.

I spend a lot of time on trains and I could count on one hand the number of times someone has come along to check my ticket. Of course they can be automated, as can ticket selling and most of these other jobs. Sure you need a few people but frankly at the stations I use regularly there are a lot of people in uniform standing around chatting and doing fuck all else. If their jobs were threatened I’m sure they could use the transferable skills of standing around chatting and assisting someone occasionally in a number of other employment settings.