December 9th - Where you’ll be able to travel by train during the rail strikes
Simon Calder's Independent Travel Podcast
The Independent
3.6 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 9 December 2022
⏱️ 9 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The most protracted and disruptive national rail strikes since 1989 begin on Tuesday 13 December. They involve walk-outs on a total of 12 days, stretching into the New Year, by the RMT union as well as some industrial action by the TSSA and Unite unions.
But so long as you plan carefully, there is no reason to avoid the trains on strike days – thousands of them will be running.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Simon Corder, welcoming you to the very last independent travel podcast of the week. |
| 0:09.3 | Don't worry, I will be back on Monday. |
| 0:12.4 | And I hope that you've perhaps had a more fulfilling day than I have. |
| 0:17.6 | I've mostly been going through what all the train companies are doing in terms of |
| 0:24.2 | their schedules ahead of the next lot of strikes, which starts on Tuesday morning 13th of December. |
| 0:32.2 | We'll probably see some changes. Well, there's already a few cancellations gone in on the evening of |
| 0:37.0 | Monday the 12th of December. |
| 0:40.0 | But just as a reminder, the main disruption is going to be caused by a strike by the RMT union. |
| 0:50.7 | There's also transport, salary, staff association and unite unions taking some action and it's |
| 0:58.0 | basically going to involve 13th and 14th that's Tuesday and wednesday and the 16th and 17th that's |
| 1:04.7 | Friday and Saturday next week and generally well varies from one to another. Generally, there's a sort of |
| 1:14.6 | half-decent service on the intervening Thursday and indeed on the following Sunday, which will be |
| 1:22.3 | the 18th of December, but that varies, as I say, from one operator to another. I've been covering these |
| 1:31.4 | strikes for almost six months because that was when they were first called and this I think is |
| 1:38.4 | going to be the most extensive service. Now, I need to stress that the rail delivery group representing the train |
| 1:47.8 | operator says, planned journeys and advance and only travel by train if absolutely necessary. |
| 1:54.8 | Well, I think you can plan to travel by train if you want to or you'd like to or you need to um there's no great |
| 2:04.7 | absolute necessity to it because the train operators are pretty good now at getting people around |
| 2:13.8 | on the key lines and that's the main thing so i'm going to go around clockwise if you do |
| 2:18.6 | what i mean from kent and the high speed link to ashford will be running from london st pancras |
| 2:24.4 | international and some more local trains to dartford and to seven oaks um the so you to Ashbyn, you can't get any further like, |
| 2:35.9 | when, to more interesting places, perhaps, like Foxton, like Dover, like Canterbury, |
... |
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