Christmas closures on travel network add to passenger misery
Eleven days of rail and tube closures in London over the Christmas period have been announced by Network Rail, which will severely disrupt the plans of many Londoners hoping to travel over the holiday.
[UKPRwire, Thu Nov 20 2008] Eleven days of rail and tube closures in London over the Christmas period have been announced by Network Rail, which will severely disrupt the plans of many Londoners hoping to travel over the holiday.
The longest suspension of services will be on South West Trains between Clapham Junction and Barnes, which will take place from December 15 to January 4. The Jubilee Line will close for three days.
Network Rail has defended the closures, saying that the holiday period is the best time to carry out necessary maintenance work since travel is lighter than at any other time of the year.
The news will come as a blow to long-suffering passengers already coping with costly delays and even greater disruption to the service when problems do occur – despite their paying billions of pounds in fares. In 2006/07, passengers paid £5.1 billion in fares, on top of which Network Rail received £3.4 billion from the Department for Transport; the DfT also paid £1.7 billion to the Train Operating Companies.
A report from the Public Accounts Committee found that while performance levels on the network had returned to those of 2000, prior to the Hatfield derailment, the greater congestion on the network today means that the consequences of any incident lead to much greater disruption. MPs will today be asking rail firms to explain to passengers why, despite all the money poured into the system, the network experiences such major and lengthy disruption when problems occur, rather than having them speedily resolved.
The lack of adequate communication and coordination between the emergency services and the network also came under attack in the report. Rescue and fire services are found to be fragmented and, shockingly, do not always know how to contact Network Rail, nor are they able to assess the impact of decisions they make on passengers elsewhere. Parts of the network are not even covered by mobile phone signals.
To address these serious problems in communication, the committee has recommended that the Department for Transport take a more active role in coordinating the industry, emergency services, and related services.
Meanwhile, passengers will have little choice but to put up with the holiday closures – the same way they have to put up with overcrowded trains, lengthy delays, further fare hikes, and (perhaps most frustrating of all for regular travellers) being stuck in a train that’s come to a halt for no apparent reason, and not being given any information by the driver or crew as to how long they will be sitting motionless on the track.
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