June 22nd - Looking back on day one of the rail strikes as second day is confirmed

Simon Calder's Independent Travel Podcast

The Independent

Places & Travel, Leisure, Society & Culture

3.6 • 628 Ratings

🗓️ 22 June 2022

⏱️ 7 minutes

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Summary

I've been looking to see what were the repercussions of yesterday's rail strike on the network and suffice to say it was an uneven picture. It seems major cities, where there are more people reliant on trains, had the worst of it but the action hasn't had any success in making everyone try to find a solution to the RMT issues with pay and compulsory redundancy, with a government unwilling to engage putting train operators in a difficult spot.

And more is to come, as it's been confirmed Thursday's industrial action will go ahead - with perhaps even more than the original three days being planned.

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Transcript

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0:34.1	Hello and welcome to Wednesday's independent travel podcast. I do try to bring you reports from various parts of the world.
0:44.3	At the moment, I'm just crossing the canal basin at Paddington Station. I've been running around via various stations finding out what's going on and the news is that today
0:57.8	Wednesday has been a sort of all right day after a few hours at the start of the day when normal
1:03.8	trains did not operate that's following yesterday's strike we've also got the London Underground getting back into roughly normal operation
1:15.6	again after a 24-hour strike by members of the RMT Union. I've been reflecting on what happened
1:26.5	yesterday on Tuesday, which was the first proper national rail strike for 30 years or more.
1:35.5	And I kind of reflected that certainly talking to union members, union officials, the railway industry,
1:48.3	that hopefully people were going to kind of try and think of a way forward
1:53.6	that didn't involve any more stoppages.
1:57.6	My thought was, and this was probably towards the end of the day when I was in Swindon having happily travelled west from London,
2:08.1	that actually the operation which the rail industry managed to mount for a significant number of passengers was probably better from the
2:22.6	traveller's point of view than the union had anticipated it wasn't a full service by any means
2:30.4	that if you're listening in Cornwall or Dorset or anywhere west or north of
2:35.5	Cardiff in Wales or anywhere north or west of Falkirk in Scotland you'll be thinking
2:41.8	well we didn't have any trains similar thing in some of the great UK cities such as
2:48.0	Chester and Hull, no trains at all.
2:51.6	But if you are kind of just harsh and objective and just look at the number of people who normally travel and the number who were able to travel,
	...

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