Londoners Take to Bikes, Boats, Taxis Amid 24-Hour Tube Strike
Londoners Take to Bikes, Boats, Taxis in Tube Strike
Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty Images
London commuters queue for water taxis during the Tube strike on Sept. 7.
London commuters queue for water taxis during the Tube strike on Sept. 7. Photographer: Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty Images
Londoners Plan to Take to Bikes, Boats, Taxis in Tube Strike
Jason Alden/Bloomberg
The shutdown of the city’s subway started at 9 p.m. yesterday and will continue until this evening.
The shutdown of the city’s subway started at 9 p.m. yesterday and will continue until this evening. Photographer: Jason Alden/Bloomberg
Londoners should see a resumption of full service on the city’s subway system today after a strike by as many as 10,000 Tube workers shut down much of the network yesterday.
“We’re expecting a full service to be up and running” on the London Underground, said a Transport for London spokesman by phone. TfL manages the capital’s public transit networks.
Commuters yesterday took to boats, bikes, taxis, and their own two feet to get to work as the first of a series of 24-hour strikes over planned job cuts was staged.
The partial shutdown of the city’s subway started in the evening of Sept. 6 and ended at 9 p.m. yesterday after talks with management broke down last week.
About 40 percent of the city’s 500 Tube trains ran yesterday morning, with only one line out of service, according to TfL. Mayor Boris Johnson added about 100 extra buses and a boat with room for 500, the transit operator said.
It was the fourth time strikers have shut down the London Underground since 2002.
No talks were reported to be scheduled between TfL and the striking unions, the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers, or RMT, and the Transport Salaried Staffs’ Association.
Trains were halted on the Circle line, while Victoria, Bakerloo, District, Hammersmith & City, Metropolitan, Piccadilly and Jubilee lines had partial service, according to London Underground’s website. There were minor delays on the Waterloo & City line, and the Northern line ran a full service.
TfL hired companies to organize bicycle rides from locations outside central London, it said in a statement. Extra river shuttles were added between Tower, Westminster and London Eye piers. A private catamaran service, Thames Clippers, added extra sailings, according to spokeswoman Stephanie Jones.
A one-day strike on June 10, 2009, added an extra 1.3 million hours to Londoners’ travel time, according to a survey last year commissioned by Citrix Systems Inc. A day’s strike may cost businesses 48 million pounds ($74 million), according to the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
To contact the reporters on this story: David Altaner in London at daltaner@bloomberg.net Ben Martin in London at bmartin38@bloomberg.net.
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