April 3rd- Train strikes across the UK: a traveler's strategy

Simon Calder's Independent Travel Podcast

The Independent

Places & Travel, Leisure, Society & Culture

3.6 • 628 Ratings

🗓️ 3 April 2024

⏱️ 8 minutes

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Summary

Join me as I unravel the upcoming train strikes by the Aslef Union, highlighting the key issues and offering advice on coping with the travel chaos. From alternative transport options to essential travel advice, get prepared for the strike days.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me Simon Calder. It's Wednesday the 3rd of April, which puts us on the eve of the next bout of industrial action by train drivers belonging to the Aslef Union. I'm going to be talking about the effect that this is
0:23.3	going to have over the next week or so, but first a reminder about what this is all about.
0:30.5	Effectively, we're now into month 22 of a long and bitter dispute that's overpay and more particularly working arrangements.
0:41.2	Yes, since July 2022, train drivers belonging to Aslef have been walking out at the 14 train operators
0:49.8	controlled by the government.
0:52.9	The union is demanding a no-strings pay award. They say some of
0:58.7	our members haven't had an increase for five years. But the rail firms, who effectively are
1:05.1	taking their orders from, ministers say any increase is contingent on radical reforms to working practices.
1:13.4	That's because, at the moment, the public subsidies are astonishing in terms of how much the taxpayer is paying to keep a, well, frankly, rather ramshackle, railway show on the road.
1:28.4	And it's all to do with the way that rail behaviour has changed so radically since COVID.
1:37.0	The amount of travel is actually bouncing back.
1:41.0	We're almost back to the same passenger numbers that we had in 2019. The trouble
1:47.2	is the income is much lower. That's because an awful lot of the bedrock of rail revenue.
1:55.9	Effectively, the season tickets that people were paying to commute in from Reading, from Woking, from
2:02.7	Stevenage, from Lewis, all these places, they are basically thinking, oh, I'll do a couple of
2:09.8	days a week, maybe. And so therefore that certainty, those billions of pounds, simply isn't
2:16.7	coming in. So a very, very tough dispute. But the one thing
2:21.6	we can all agree on is the effects. And I've spent since the strikes were called about three
2:27.6	weeks ago, I've spent time just looking at what all the rail firms will be doing. The overtime ban is going to lead to cancellations,
2:37.0	but the chances are that even if your train is cancelled,
2:40.3	the one before and or the one afterwards will still be running.
2:44.2	It's the strikes that really bite.
	...

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