Tube Strike Drama

London ground to a halt this week with the commencement of a 72-hour tube strike on Monday evening at 5pm. There was no service on nine of the twelve tube lines, including the Central Line that I use to get to work. Getting home that night was fairly easy as I went to gym, and jumped on a bus around 9:30pm. But tensions were already at breaking point. The bus was jammed full, and hot as hell, and two separate arguments broke out on both decks. I was reminded of how society breaks down in David Koepp's film The Trigger Effect, and wondered how London would cope with a sustained terrorist attack. As Lionel Shriver notes in The Guardian this week, the greatest fear of terrorism is the fear it generates.

While Monday night was fairly easy, getting to and from work on Tuesday was a nightmare. Living so close to the West End, I figured there was no chance I would get on a bus. I was right. I set out from home by walking to work, and noted that every bus that passed me was absurdly filled beyond capacity. It took me a little over an hour to walk to work, and an hour for the return trip home, which is not bad seeing as it's a distance of 6 .2 kilometres (3.9 miles). To give the morning trip some spice, I detoured down New Bond Street and through Burlington Arcade to do some window-shopping. It seemed appropriately capitalistic to window-shop along some of the most expensive real estate in the world, during a transport strike.

The absurdity of this strike is that Transport for London, and the Mayor of London, agreed to every demand by the RMT Union several days before the start of the strike. The Union decided to flex their collective muscle, and strike anyway, even though everyone, including the PM Gordon Brown, cannot understand why, and felt they shouldn't have striked. Worse still, the RMT is threatening to strike again next week. The catalyst for this action is the collapse of Metronet, the private group of companies that won the public-private-partnership contract to maintain, renew, and upgrade nine of the twelve underground lines. Despite being one of the largest contracts ever awarded, £17 billion over 30 years, Metronet failed to deliver. Just prior to the company's collapse a few months back, they were 10,000 work days (ie 27 years) behind schedule, and had overspent by £1.1 billion on just one of the two contracts they won. That's quite an achievement for a company that started four years ago, and somehow managed a £50 million profit in one recent year. Basically, the RMT really want the operations of Metronet returned to the public sector. What they forget is that the third contract, won by Tube Lines, is running to schedule and to budget. That is why three of the twelve tube lines remained open.

I cheated a little with the photo for this blog post. The closed station entrance you see is for Aldwych Station, also known as Strand Station. While I did take the photo on the morning of the strike, this station is always closed to the public, and has been since 1994. The station is, however, kept in working order because it is often used as a film location. Lots of films were shot here, including Battle of Britain, Patriot Games, V for Vendetta, Superman IV, Creep, 28 Weeks Later, and The Good Shepherd. There is more info on Wikipedia, including the nice trivia fact that the Elgin Marbles were stored here during the war.