London - Millions of Londoners struggled to
work on Monday at the start of a week of travel chaos which sees
rail networks brought to a standstill by a series of strikes.
Commuters used cars, boats, bicycles and heaving buses to
cope with a 24-hour walkout by underground station staff that
left the majority of "Tube" stops in central London closed and
no services operating from mainline stations such as Victoria,
Kings Cross and Waterloo.
Huge queues began building up outside stations while many
major roads in the city were gridlocked.
"I'm giving up on even trying," said software developer
Rajiv Perseedoss, 30, who was trying to get to work in central
London from Canary Wharf in the east of the city.
"I'm not a Tube worker, I don't know about their conditions,
but whatever it is, they can't take it out on everybody."
Monday's walkout on the Tube, which carries up to 4.8
million passengers a day, begins a week of industrial action
which will hit rail and air passengers, and there are warnings
the problems could spread across the country.
Train drivers on Southern Rail are striking on Tuesday,
Wednesday and Friday, bringing all rail services used by
hundreds of thousands of passengers from the south coast and
Gatwick Airport to London to a halt.
Southern commuters have already suffered months of delays,
cancellations and walkouts in Britain's worse rail disruption in
decades, due to a row over whose role it should be to open and
close doors on the trains.
The Sunday Times newspaper said the dispute could spread to
services in central and northern England as other operators look
to bring in driver-only trains.
Read also: London commuters face second day of strike disruption
British Airways staff will also begin a strike for two days
over pay on Tuesday, although the impact of the walkout is
likely to be limited.
"Political action"
"It's intolerable that key public services can be brought to
a halt by a small number of militant trade unionists in what
increasingly looks like a co-ordinated political action," Nick
Herbert, a lawmaker in Prime Minister Theresa May's Conservative
Party, told the Daily Telegraph newspaper.
The London Underground strike by staff in the RMT and TSSA
unions comes in a dispute over staffing levels after the closure
of ticket offices in recent years.
Transport for London (TfL) said it agreed more staff were
needed in stations, and it had already started recruiting 200
extra workers. However, the unions said TfL's offer did not go
far enough.
"The strike today is totally unnecessary," said London Mayor
Sadiq Khan. "This Tube strike is causing misery to millions of
Londoners."
Many Conservative lawmakers have called for the government
to bring in new laws to curb strikes which they say cost
millions of pounds and damage London's image as one of the
world's major economic and financial powerhouses.
"At a time when the government is doing everything it can to
show Britain is open for business post Brexit, a resurgence in
union activity doesn't help that message," lawmaker Tim Loughton
told the Telegraph.