Major railway stations around England have been left deserted after train drivers joined the latest wave of strikes that Network Rail said had so far cost more than £400m in lost revenue.
Hubs including Birmingham New Street and London Victoria had no passenger trains at all during the 24-hour strike by thousands of drivers in the Aslef union.
Thursday’s strike, which affected 15 train operators and halted most commuter services in the south-east, Midlands and north of England, came between two 48-hour strikes by the Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers union (RMT), the second of which begins on Friday. Thousands of the union’s members working for Network Rail and train firms are due to strike again until Saturday, leaving only about 20% of normal services running around Britain.
Trains should return to normal by lunchtime on Sunday, after four weeks of disruption resulting from industrial action, including an RMT overtime ban at train operators over the festive period since a week of strikes in mid-December.
Network Rail said the cumulative cost of national strikes since last summer was now estimated at £400m in lost ticket revenue.
A spokesperson said about £20m-£25m was lost on each strike day, bar the two of the 21 to date that fell over the Christmas bank holiday period. They estimated that £1m-£1.5m a day was saved in staff costs.
The leaders of both unions, along with industry leaders, are due to meet the rail minister, Huw Merriman, on Monday in the latest attempt to find some sort of agreement in the long-running dispute.
No further strikes are scheduled, but union leaders said they could escalate action without progress. RMT and Aslef members recently voted to extend the mandate for industrial action for a further six months.
Mick Whelan, the general secretary of Aslef, said it was inevitable that further strikes would be held unless the deadlock was broken.
He said: “The situation is getting worse and my members now want to go harder and faster because of the lack of progress. We are in a weird world where the government will do anything to keep private companies in the industry. It is inevitable that more strikes will be held and probably escalate.”
Earlier, Whelan dismissed the idea that a £2,000 increase, reportedly to be proposed by government, would be accepted by drivers. “Inflation was running this year at 14%, we’ve had no pay rise for the previous two years, and they want industry reform for 3% – I don’t think that will fly with my members,” he said.
An indication of the strikes’ impact on the wider economy came in new data from the Office for National Statistics, which showed one in six businesses said they were affected in November. Just over 4% of all the firms surveyed across the economy said they had struggled to obtain necessary items for their business that month, in which rail and postal workers took industrial action.
The Department for Transport said: “Passengers have rightly had enough of rail strikes and want the disruption to end. Unions should step back from this strike action so we can start 2023 by ending this damaging dispute.”
Passengers have been advised to attempt to travel by train only if absolutely necessary on Friday, with only about 20% of services running, and only between 7.30am and 6.30pm on main intercity and urban lines. With critical signalling workers on strike, large parts of rural England, Scotland and Wales will have no trains running throughout the next two days.
