THERE is often a slow start to the New Year, but 2023 has kicked off with an eerie quietness in much of the city which is entirely attributable to the train strikes. All over the commuter belt and parts of outer London — anywhere where getting to work means getting a train — people are deciding that they may as well stay at home. And as a week of strikes continues, many people are now wondering whether they should give up on a means of transport which is so reliably unreliable and either work from home, as in the pandemic, or take jobs within easier reach. London cannot take another year of this perpetual disruption. Every business, every sector, is affected: theatres and restaurants as well as shops and services.
Members of the RMT at Network Rail and 14 train operators will stage two 48-hour walkouts from Tuesday and Friday, while Aslef drivers will strike on Thursday. This amounts to an unwanted week out of the office for many of us. For a man as calculating as Mick Lynch, leader of the RMT, the prospect of losing passengers — no matter how effective for this strike — is not good news. If fewer people travel by train, revenues decline. Then the pressure to adopt cost-saving measures such as service cuts and ticket office closures will be impossible to resist.
