AIBU to be surprised that the trains don't run over Christmas?

[HeritageQuay]

So I've been invited by friends to their Christmas lunch in central London. Having been on my own for the last few years, I was delighted to be invited and immediately accepted.

I live about 50 miles outside London and so travel by train is clearly the most sensible option. Accordingly I have been ordering presents etc. on Amazon for delivery to my hosts.

So today I tried to look up train times, only to find that there are no trains at all on Christmas Day and Boxing Day. This came as complete surprise to me, is this a one-off or is it a regular thing?

Not quite sure how to get there now as the last thing I want to do is drive through London with all the issues re Congestion Charge / Ulez / Street parking etc., and in any case I wanted to enjoy a few drinks at Christmas!

How do other people travel at Christmas?

If employers are desperate to have their staff at work on Christmas Day they can pay to get them there. The country’s broke.

Why does everything have to be available every day?
Why does a parcel have to come in 24 hours or 48 hours?
What happened to waiting, to seasonality, to people being able to have time with their families - especially at Christmas?

@KIlliePieMyOhMy a large portion of this country doesn’t celebrate Christmas. Additionally if it’s all about spending time with family, how is anyone supposed to get anywhere if nothing runs for days on end for all this family time 😂😂 also does your sentiment only apply to delivery drivers and trains or are you also happy for hospitals and fire stations to shut down

Just because some things can't shut down, doesn't mean that everything can't.
Would you want shops open? Schools?

Loads of shops near me are open, run by Sikhs, Muslims and Hindus who happily work hard and make money whilst we all have our precious day of rest 😂

Quite a few shops do open on Christmas Day - same as pubs, restaurants, bars, hotels etc.

If you work in one of these industries, do you have a different view?

I used to and it didn't bother me - I knew what I'd signed up for when I took the job.

I grew up with parents who normally worked at least part of Christmas Day, so I guess my "norm" is that we celebrated as and when we could - some years that was Boxing Day, some years Christmas Eve, some years I went to work with them and sometimes we didn't manage to celebrate properly until New Year. It was honestly no big deal.

I used to and I’m afraid I still don’t really understand the resistance to Christmas working on what seems to be almost philosophical grounds, though I accept there might be some economic logic.

I had much the same attitude to this as @biscuitsandbooks - I knew was joining a 24/7/365 industry and I knew I was eligible for Christmas working when I signed on the line.

As a bit of background where I was Christmas working was to some degree financially incentivised.

When time came for those involved to draw up Christmas rosters it was, in simple terms, volunteers first.

If the work couldn’t be fully covered by volunteers then the non-volunteers got assigned work but there was a weighting system, so the more Christmas they worked in previous years the less chance they had of being forced to work another Christmas.

I actually quite enjoyed Christmas period working but the downside was I was usually a public transport user (London area) and getting to/from the office on Christmas Day itself could sometimes be a real PITA and quite expensive.

It would be quite easy to run an equivalent of a Sunday service in the North West - Northern don't run anything on Sundays!

The vast majority don't have to go to work. Si why should bus or train drivers?

Because it's essential for some people to travel to work every day of the year and not all of them have access to a car, so it's also an essential service.

The people that keep the basic but hugely important functions of hospitals going, for example, are not on high wages - cleaners, kitchen staff, healthcare assistants etc. Some health authorities pay inflated prices for taxis for staff so they can get to work. That's not cost effective and it certainly doesn't stop people from 'having to work'.

Transport is essential on Christmas Day too. Do you think it's better that people are forced into paying double the already relatively high cost of taxis, than be able to get a bus, just to get to work?

The vast majority don't have to go to work. Si why should bus or train drivers?

To transport essential workers who do have to work? Many places for essential workers don’t have parking, and not all have cars. Distance via taxi would be prohibitive and take their weekly wage in one go. So many reasons.

'Why would' is a more pertinent question than 'why should'.

There are lots of reasons why someone would.

Because they don't celebrate Christmas
Double/triple time
Live alone, have nowhere else to be and are happy to work that day
Partner working so they might as well
Because they find it hard to say no
Because it's a convenient excuse to get out of visiting people they rather wouldn't or get away from the in laws visiting for a few hours
Because they understand that it's needed and are willing to put others first
Etc

Oh I'm sure there are reasons why 'someone' would. No doubt the number who'd be willing to work is higher than zero. Especially if triple time did actually get paid, albeit train drivers already have access to lots of overtime pay anyway so their incentive might have to be higher. The money for that would have to come from the consumer, of course.

But the question needs to be about the workforce as a whole, not individual examples. And the fact that we've never had concerted campaigns from drivers themselves to be able to work more on Christmas Day is very telling. Demand doesn't create supply, and there's no indication that the sector as a whole would properly staff this. We should really have learned by now what happens when we make greater demands in a sector that already doesn't have enough workers.

Right, so answering the question that you asked wasn't good enough?

Where I am in Scotland, we have a reduced service for buses on Christmas Day, and both buses and trains on Boxing Day.

The bus service for 25th that goes through the village I live in was only confirmed once they knew there were drivers willing to work it. It clearly doesn't need the whole workforce to be on board with it - just enough to cover the vastly reduced levels of service. Which in the case of where I live was reduced from 18 hours per day to 8, and from every thirty minutes to every two hours, and it was a shorter route than normal. My understanding is that they had two drivers each do a four hour shift on Christmas Day.

I'm laughing at the idea that people in any specific sector would campaign to work more any day of the year! Being happy or willing to work a specific day isn't the same as actively wanting to. Although I do know a couple of people in retail in England that would like to be able to do more hours on a Sunday and are envious of our Scottish opening hours! (They get a slightly higher hourly rate, for one of them it's a day with no childcare issues as the kids are with their Dad, the other is at uni so weekend working is good for him.)

Didn't actually ask a question. Rather, I specified that it's a more important one than what anyone thinks should happen.

And depends what you mean by 'good enough'. Giving a list of reasons why some individuals might be willing to work it in conditions that may or may not exist certainly doesn't show that it would be a viable national option, which is what this thread basically is about and what my point was. Scotland of course has a culturally specific history re Christmas celebrating, which also needs to be factored in.

This thread is full of posters talking about what other people should or want to or did used to do, but that's not the ultimate test. I'm laughing at the number of ways people find to ignore that.

I'm not convinced it's a more important question than the question of whether or not public transport is an essential service, and therefore should it be available 365 days a year.

And honestly, given that ime Scotland is in general culturally less diverse than England, I'm pretty sure it would be, if anything, easier to get people willing to work on Christmas Day 'down south'.

The question about practicalities is more important because there's nothing without 'would'. Belief that a service should exist doesn't create a supply of people willing and able to provide it at the desired price, however attached anyone might be to the idea.

Disagree with the second point, because the largest group of working age people in England are still those who celebrate Christmas. It's true that Scotland has less diversity, but the majority population there don't have the same cultural history of Christmas as the majority population in England. The percentage of people with Scottish roots in Scotland is higher than the percentage of people in England who come from traditions that don't celebrate Christmas and haven't picked it up since arriving.

Additionally, wider societal factors exist whether one personally celebrates or not. Childcare, daycare and elder care is limited. Muslim and Jewish schools are closed just the same as Christian and secular ones, so parents who want time with their DC when they're off school have the same limited options as anyone else. Lots of sectors have shutdowns over Christmas, sometimes compulsory, which means even families who don't celebrate may still be meeting and making use of the time just because that's why they happen to be off. There are multiple reasons why people are unwilling or unable to work on 25th December, even if they don't celebrate Christmas. These are probably stronger in England than Scotland given the recent cultural practices of the two.

DappledThings · 22/12/2024 18:28

I was astounded when I was in Melbourne one Christmas and not only were the trams running but they were free too. I wouldn't ever expect public transport to be running on Christmas Day in the UK

London Underground was free on NYE when we were young. Not sure if it still is?

Respectfully, I disagree.

I think the fundamental question of whether a service should exist has to come before the practicalities of how it can work. There's little point in figuring out the how, if people don't want it to happen.

And while admittedly Scotland didn't have Christmas as a public holiday until the 1950s, we still have a long tradition of celebrating Christmas (despite the alleged 'ban'). The vast majority of people celebrate it, just as they do elsewhere in the UK. It's not less Christmassy here because of something that happened nearly 500 years ago!

To the poster who said rail staff needs a day off too ..... so do all the other industries that don't close down at Christmas. I don't understand why the trains aren't running either as we are all encouraged to drive less etc

It’s been explained why - it would cost a fortune.

There's a big difference between waiting a day or two for a parcel and being unable to get to work or indeed to the friends or family you'd like to spend Christmas with.

If the public transport were there, it would be used. There is unmet need.

See also the record turnouts at parkruns across the UK this year - people are desperate for something to do. This idea that everyone turns in on themselves for Christmas and you have to stay at home and stuff yourself with turkey and play board games is tedious for those who don't fancy it or don't have anyone to do it with.