Commuters suffered one of the worst single days of rail strikes since the start of disruption in summer when thousands of train drivers stopped work yesterday.
No trains ran in most parts of England because of 24 hours of industrial action by members of the Aslef union.
Passengers in London complained that travelling was a “nightmare” and said they could “barely remember a day when public transport ran well”.
About 12,500 drivers from 15 rail companies took part in the strike as part of a long pay dispute. The action was sandwiched between two 48-hour pickets organised by the RMT union, which took place on Tuesday and Wednesday and will start again today and tomorrow.
When the RMT — which represents signallers, guards, conductors and workers in ticket offices — organises walkouts, it is possible for rail operators to provide scaled-down services. Network Rail deploys a skeleton team of contingency signal workers, allowing one in five services to operate.
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However, trains cannot run without drivers. The union, which represents 96 per cent of train drivers in England, Scotland and Wales, has orchestrated a series of strikes since August last year, but these had involved staff from only 12 companies, rather than yesterday’s 15. Most routes in the southeast, Midlands and north of England were not operational.
In London, John Gratton, 51, had to take a bus from Herne Hill to the site where he is working near Victoria. The construction worker told the Evening Standard: “I think the rail strikers have lost the plot. They are being selfish and making life difficult for normal working people like me.”
Chris Calderwood, 32, a gym worker, said: “I’ve only moved to London recently and I can barely remember a day when public transport ran well.”
Mick Whelan, Aslef’s general secretary, said that proposed laws imposing minimum service levels during strikes could backfire on the government by prompting workers to stage longer periods of industrial action to retain the same impact.
He also claimed that the government had not shown union leaders details of a £2,000 annual increase said to have been offered to drivers and he accused rail firms of a “corrupt and immoral deal” with ministers by taking profits while refusing to give drivers a pay rise for four years.
