Great Western Coffee Shop

Christmas travel in UK hit by road and rail chaos

Little festive cheer on Britain^s roads and railways as planned engineering work coincides with car crashes and signal failures

Road crashes and rail disruption have delayed people heading off for Christmas.

On Britain^s busiest motorway, the M25, a multi-vehicle accident closed two lanes between junction five near Otford in Kent and junction six near Oxted in Surrey. There were also hold-ups for drivers after a broken-down lorry led to a lane closure on junction 12, south of Heathrow airport.

In North Yorkshire the A64 was closed in both directions between the B1249 (Staxton) and the B1248 (Norton) due to an accident at West Knapton, with the Highways Agency advising drivers to consider alternative routes.

Those heading for cross-Channel services from Kent were delayed by heavy traffic on the M20 near Folkestone.

For rail passengers making their way to Heathrow there were delays caused by a signal failure at Southall, which slowed services run by First Great Western, Heathrow Express and Heathrow Connect.

The Southern train company was unable to run any services between Clapham Junction and Milton Keynes Central amid staff shortages.

There were delays to Virgin Trains^ services between Shotton in North Wales and Chester in Cheshire after a vehicle struck a bridge near Shotton.

Up to 4 million Britons are heading overseas over the period from 19 December to 3 January. Popular winter sun destinations for include the Canary Islands, Tunisia and Morocco, while top long-haul destinations include Dubai, Mexico, Cuba and Egypt.

British Airways^ schedules include 267 flights on Christmas Day, on which 37,000 turkey dinners will be served. Top BA destinations over the festive period are Dubai, Barbados, New York, Australia and Barcelona.

Ryanair is carrying more than 3.5 million customers between 20 December and 6 January ^ an increase of 500,000 customers over the 2013-14 holiday period.

EasyJet has had to cancel some Boxing Day flights due to a strike by French cabin crew. However, none of the affected services depart from or arrive in the UK.

Rail travellers are having to contend with disruption caused by a ^200m engineering programme over the holiday period.

Although a lot of the work, being carried out by about 11,000 engineers, is being undertaken on Christmas Day and Boxing Day, there will be major disruption on the West Coast mainline due to work at Watford in Hertfordshire and between Stafford and Crewe.

The West Coast line will be shut between Euston station in London and Hemel Hempstead in Hertfordshire after the last trains on Wednesday until 29 December. It will also be closed between Stafford and Crewe after the last trains on Christmas Eve until 28 December.

Also, work at Reading in Berkshire will restrict services in and out of Paddington station in London until 5 January.

A 16-day part-closure of London Bridge station for work involving the ^6.5bn Thameslink programme started on Saturday. From 20 December to 4 January Southern and Thameslink trains will not stop at London Bridge.

Other work that will extend beyond Boxing Day is at a spot just outside King^s Cross in London. This will restrict services on December 27 and 28.

And masses of rail cancellations due to traincrew shortage, including FGW

Cos crews are taling leave at Christmas proving staff do want time off over the festive period

Enjoying the sherry, ChrisB?  ;D

No-one doubts that pretty much everyone wants time off over Christmas, but that doesn't alter the fact that its incumbent on FGW to ensure that there are sufficient staff available on duty to cover all eventualities, if it's the case that they've given too many people leave, that's crap management.....if people are ill, that's unfortunate, if it's festive sickies/hangovers, that's unprofessional and unforgiveable.......far be it from me of course to speculate which it might be.....suspect a combination of all three!  ;)

This links to the Boxing Day services debate in another place http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=15079.0 (http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=15079.0)

As I understand it, at present the industry relies heavily on rest day working particularly for bank holidays. If people do not want to volunteer to work on a rest day they do not have to. Where does that leave management?

All this fragmentation results in Consultants and Lawyers having to be paid extortionate amounts during the process of linking all the dysfunctional parts together.
We have to have an ORR and an army of Civil Servants, not railwaymen (DaFT) to supposedly determine what should and should not happen. Then there are the staff working on Delay Attribution which is only passing costs round and round within the industry.   Just wondering if a FOI would ever get an accurate result of all these costs.
But with a Government whose ideology is privatisation they don't want to know about it.

That's only half of it, there will inevitably "punch ups" over contractual issues of was it NR's fault or the contractor that caused the delay even messier when multiple contracts are in place, these discussion will go on for months will involve long hours travel of people up and down the country

Are you suggesting that all major projects should be carried out by NR direct labour rather than contractors?

Ahhh, the Chiltern aquirement *was* an example of procurement left to the TOCs. The DfT failed to get invloved until it was too late !

Which would we rather have? :-)

You'll know about electric commuter stock before ypu need to be using it

Network Rail has informed us planned engineering work between Weston-Super-Mare and Bristol Temple Meads may overrun tomorrow morning.

Something interesting...A form of 'heads up'...of course people still aren't happy though. FGW will maybe never win...  ::) ;D


https://twitter.com/FGW/status/551830507353571329