Misery and mayhem for passengers on Wednesday amid major strikes

Rail passengers face more travel chaos on Wednesday due to ongoing strikes by train drivers in a long-running pay dispute. Aslef members will go out on services running across England and in Wales and Scotland on Avanti West Coast, East Midlands Railway, West Midlands Trains, CrossCountry, London North Western Railway, Chiltern and Great Western Railway.

Services will be paralyzed throughout the day, with stations closed and few trains running. Running ones will start later and finish earlier than usual.

An ongoing overtime ban at 16 train operators continues till Saturday, which is also causing disruption. Passengers are being urged to check before attempting to travel by train this week.

The dispute is now the longest in the rail industry. Strikes on some of the country’s busiest commuter routes led to widespread service cancellations on Tuesday on c2c, Greater Anglia, GTR’s Great Northern, Thameslink and Southern (including Gatwick Express), Southeastern and South Western Railway.

A strike will take place on Thursday at the LNER, Northern and TransPennine Express. Aslef said its members had not had a pay rise for five years and accused the government of “giving up” on trying to resolve the dispute.

A GDR spokesman said: “The rail industry is working hard to keep trains running, but services on some lines are likely to be affected in the evening before and morning after each strike between May 7 and May 9 as many trains will not be affected. be in the right warehouses to start next day services.

“We can apologize to our customers for this completely unnecessary strike called by Aslef management, which will unfortunately disrupt travel once again. It will also cause further damage to an industry which receives up to £54m a week in taxpayers’ cash to keep services running in the wake of the Covid recession.”

A spokesman for the Department for Transport said: “The Transport Secretary and the Rail Minister have already facilitated a pay offer which would take average train driver wages up to £65,000 – almost double the UK average wage. Aslef is the only union left on strike after the Government oversaw agreements with all other unions.

“Instead of causing disruption to passengers, they should make this offer to their members and work with the industry to end this dispute.”

There is a glimmer of hope that negotiations will begin in an attempt to resolve the dispute after the Rail Delivery Group invited Aslef to discuss exploring any common ground that could break the impasse. There have been no formal talks between the operators and the union for a year or more involving a transport minister.

Business groups have warned of the impact on the economy of the strikes, particularly for hospitality firms.