Christmas travel time to quadruple in UK, main lines hit by rail works and tube strikes

Monday, December 17, 2018

The festive journey home is marred by the worst Christmas travel chaos for years in Britain as major rail works hit six of UK’s seven main lines with 330 projects underway.

Militant union bosses plan protests and four million Brits heading abroad over Chritsmas will face long airport check-in lines and face delays in getting to the airport as Heathrow Express and Gatwick Express both to cancel services.

Nineteen million vehicles will take to roads on  what is tagged as Frantic Friday on December 21. There will be commuters clash with school picks up and getaway traffic.

The most congested getaway rush for the year will be triggered by the schools breaking up on Friday as per the RAC.

Last year the schools ended six days earlier that led to staggered Christmas travel. The RAC travel trends show that Friday afternoon and Saturday afternoon will have the biggest jams. Over the Chritsmas fortnight to New Year’s Day around 30 million leisure car journey is expected to happen.

The Network Rail will be investing £148million in one of the biggest ever rail works involving 330 projects and 25,000 engineers. The works were predicted as ‘worst ever’ by rail experts at Christmas with completely hacked off passengers.

The Christmas fortnight will see 20 million rail journeys, however, from Saturday onward , the 11 days of engineering works will see prominent delays on prominent routes vis London Paddington to the West, London Liverpool Street to the East, London Victoria to the South, London Waterloo to the South-West, London Euston to the North-West and Scotland, and London St Pancras to the Midlands.

Most of the major routes like the London Paddington to Reading on Sunday will take 1hr 54min via Waterloo and London Underground which will be four times longer than the usual.While London to Cardiff trips on Christmas Eve will take 4hr 5min and travel from London to Leicester on Christmas Eve will take 2hr 2min.

Bruce Williamson, a spokesman for campaign group Railfuture, said that a huge chunk was being taken out of the rail timetable this Christmas, the passenger numbers are lower than during the normal working weeks.

It was confirmed by the Highways England that some other works will be lifted from Friday to January 2 while the 229 miles’ road works will remain in place so Christmas is the least bad time to do the work.

Andy Thomas, managing director of strategic operations at Network Rail advised to plan ahead  and said that most of the network rail was open for business as usual but some routes were heavily affected.

There will be improved service for passengers as huge investment will deliver a reliable infrastructure and improved services.

A Heathrow spokesperson confirmed that Friday will be the busiest day of C hritsmas. Next week Heathrow is due 600,000 departures and around a million flying from Gatwick  over the Chritsmas fortnight.

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