UK - Railway to nowhere at Easter

[John Ashworth]

Railway to nowhere: Easter travellers face closure chaos

Dan Milmo, transport correspondent The Guardian, Saturday March 8 2008

This article appeared in the Guardian on Saturday March 08 2008 on p1 of the Top stories section.

Millions of rail and air passengers face massive disruption over Easter as Network Rail plans a repeat of the shutdowns that brought chaos to Britain at the new year, while BA confronts pilot strike action.

Engineering works at 35 locations will close parts of Britain's busiest lines, including the west coast route between London and Glasgow that was hardest hit by work overruns in January. Other lines affected are: the east coast line between York and Doncaster; the great western route between Gloucester and Newport; and the transpennine line between Huddersfield and Leeds.

Meanwhile, tens of thousands of British Airways passengers face travel misery after talks between the airline and its pilots to avert strike action collapsed in acrimony last night. BA said it would take legal action if the pilots set strike dates following a dispute over the launch of a BA subsidiary airline, with the soonest possible date for a walkout being next Saturday. The dispute led 86% of pilots to back strike action. A strike would ground BA's entire fleet, which carries nearly 100,000 passengers every day.

BA said it would "act to protect" its customers and seek a high court injunction if the pilots' union, Balpa, set dates for a walkout. With the airline's move to a new Heathrow terminal three weeks away, BA said talks would continue, but industry experts said the threat of strike action would discourage thousands of passengers from making bookings.

Network Rail was fined a record £14m by the Office of Rail Regulation (ORR) last month, following a scathing report into the "totally unacceptable" new year fiasco that saw engineering works on the west coast line overrun by four days. "What happened at new year was unacceptable and Network Rail acknowledges that. Everyone has agreed there can be no repeat," a spokesman for the regulator said.

One industry source said operators such as Virgin Trains and National Express had demanded assurances that they would not be put in a position where they let down commuters returning to work after Easter Monday. But even without overruns, rail passengers will have to cope with replacement bus journeys and delays over Easter. More than seven million people are expected to travel by train between Good Friday and Easter Monday.

A Network Rail spokesman said yesterday that completion of the work on time could not be guaranteed, but added that the management of engineering projects had been overhauled since January. "We can guarantee that we will be doing everything we can to ensure minimal disruption to passengers over Easter."

Military-style command centres will be set up to monitor work on the biggest projects, including signal replacement works at Rugby - the focus of outrage in the worst of the new year delays.

The line closures start on Good Friday and the engineering project is the second largest ever undertaken by Network Rail, with 29km of track being laid by 6,000 engineers. Some work will run into the first working day after Easter, with Virgin Trains operating a reduced service on the west coast line on the Tuesday.

However, completion delays on other projects, which again include work outside London Liverpool Street, will affect millions more passengers attempting to return to their jobs after the holiday.

The Easter work is a foretaste of disruption on the west coast line. At least 13 more weekend closures are planned by Network Rail as it scrambles to implement a new timetable on the route by December. Operators have expressed doubts whether the deadline can be met, even with the extra closures, and have warned Network Rail faces an impossible task, which will result in another large fine if it fails.