Strike Action

The strike affects Rickmansworth depot only, and I won't go into any more detail. A special timetable is in operation for the whole of today.

Apparently the timetable is:

- No fast services
- 2 tph Amersham - Wembley
- 4 tph Watford - Baker Street
- 4 tph Uxbridge - Aldgate (n/s Baker Street)

and I think the guy announcing at harrow had another one too, but I didn't catch it.

I think the other one is 2 tph Chesham-Wembley.

On my journey into work yesterday, no posters were up. I believe they were in the process of letting the public know yesterday afternoon, despite this strike being on the cards for some weeks! The "timetable" only started being planned by Service Control on Monday, when the Timetables people could have been asked to knock one up weeks ago.
Very poor planning indeed!

BTW, is the strike the reason why trains seemed to be running as 5xx this morning rather than 4xx or have I just never noticed that they run as 5xx in the morning

The lack of notice is part of the normal LU propaganda war:

Little or no advance warning helps to imply that no one's actually going to take part and thus may persuade some staff to come in (esp for early turn).

"Minor delays", or even "good service" once the traffic day has begun suggests very few, if any, people have backed the dispute and therefore encourages middle or late turn staff to attend. (Who wants to be one of just a handful of T/Ops who took strike action?)

The same occurred during the recent Tube Lines dispute. Around 30 drivers at one depot "refused to work on the grounds of safety" and there were massive gaps, but the service service status remained "good" due to orders from on high, despite the fact that station staff were being subject to abuse over this (technically "verbal assualts"). There is a "get out clause" explained in the current OTM which says "local announcements" should be used on these occasions.

Some readers with long memories may recall the '82 strike, when LT repeatedly said there was a limited service operating on the Piccadilly Line. There wasn't, and the rails were red with rust, but they were desperate to get something running on the "flagship" Heathrow branch if enough drivers and guards came in.

Like most things in LU (and industrial relations in general) these days, it's all politics and spin.

Taking account the inaccurate information being provided to passengers, who should we complain to?

21 out of 45 trains operating.

Surely there's no way that less than half a service can be defined as a 'Good Service'??

Certainly not in any meaningful way, but then we've known for a long time that the service status messages and the actual status of the service being offered frequently don't correlate.

The only thing you can say for certain is that if the status message says no trains are running then you (probably) wont be able to catch a train on that section of line.

I'm guessing that they'll explain it away by saying that the service they were offering was sufficiently close to what they planned to run (given the known lack of staff/trains available to run a normal service) to say that it was a good service. However, as we mere mortals are not privy to information on what service they plan to run this doesn't help the travelling public.

I've said before that the general public want to know two bits of information about their journey - how long they will have to wait for their train, and how long their journey will take once they are on the train. In many cases it is possible for disruption to increase the journey times without significantly increasing the interval or vice versa. The choice of status message between "Good service" (meaning anything from "perfect" to "dire"), "minor delays" (meaning anything from "not far off a good service" to "dire"), "severe delays" (meaning anything from "moderately extended journey times or intervals" to "three sardine tins an hour (if you're lucky) that'll be overtaken by a 93-year old cripple in an antique diving suit") and "suspended" (meaning anything from "two of the aforementioned sardine tins an hour" to "no trains until next week") doesn't actually help anybody plan their journey though.

If you're thinking of (as most people do) the one with the Yorkshire accent who sat in the front seat of the replacement taxi - yes!

At one point last Monday evening, the Northern Line had 23 trains between Camden Town and Golders Green northbound, all blocking back through Golders Green due to crew relief problems due to an earlier incident. Journey time for this section was in the vicinity of 1 hour.

The service status went from Minor Delays to Good Service in the midst of this.

One poster up at Uxbridge. It didn't affect my journey but then I left just after the peak and it was probably twice as busy as usual on the train. An update stating a 'reduced service' with a note suggesting using alternative routes would be a better option in many situations than 'minor delays'.

And even after the service deteriorated to such an extent that there were less than 50% of trains running, a "minor delays" message was begrudgingly issued - but with no reason given, which caused total confusion amongst staff elsewhere who were unaware of the strike.

Also, given the posters were restricted to Met Line stations there was thus no advance warning for passengers starting their journeys on other lines.

Disgraceful!

Playing politics again...