Skip to footer

London's Tube strike causes a day of disruption for many commuters

London underground rail workers walked off the job on Thursday amid a dispute about how to implement a new 24-hour service on weekends.

|
Darren Staples/Reuters
A man studies a map above Oxford Circus underground station during a 24-hour tube strike in London, Britain August 6, 2015. Millions of Londoners struggled to work on Thursday as a strike by underground rail staff brought the network to a standstill for the second time in a month over plans for a new night-time service.
  • By Associated Press

| London

Commuters faced a day of disruption Thursday after a strike shut down the London Underground system for the second time this summer.

Union members walked off the job amid a dispute about how to implement a new 24-hour service on weekends. Unions argue work-life balance issues haven't been addressed and that management should hire more people to cover extra shifts. Transport officials say they've offered a salary increase and bonuses to compensate for the changes.

Stations on the subway, known as the Tube, will be closed all day Thursday. Extra buses were put into service.

Roads were gridlocked by commuters getting to the office by car, but disruptions were not as bad as during the strike in July because many people were on vacation.

At 8.45 a.m. there were 428 separate traffic jams and 197 miles (317 kilometers) of tailbacks, according to traffic experts at TomTom. Last month, there were 1,445 jams and 761 miles of tailbacks.

Transport officials are usually able to keep a few lines running during Tube strikes. But drivers have been united in staying off the job in recent strikes, forcing management to shut down the system altogether.

Thursday's shutdown forced many commuters to find other ways to get to work. John Teixeira, a civil servant, rented a bike – and needed 90 minutes to get to the office for what is normally a 15-minute journey.

And when he got near the office, he discovered he needed to wait again.

"There's no space to park your bike, which is a big shame," he said.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to London's Tube strike causes a day of disruption for many commuters
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2015/0806/London-s-Tube-strike-causes-a-day-of-disruption-for-many-commuters
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe