Southern strike January 2017: Commuters' fury as Overground crippled on day two of walkout

Miserable: Commuters had to wait outside stations in the cold just hours before snow is forecast to hit London.
Daniele Palumbo
Francesca Gillett11 January 2017

London's transport network faced major problems for the third consecutive day as the Southern Rail strike crippled Overground services.

Commuters bemoaned the "absolutely hopeless" situation as Southern staff walked out for the second day in a row after a strike hit the Underground on Monday

Train services across the capital were hit with delays, as crowds of fed-up rail passengers were forced to wait outside several London Overground stations because of overcrowding.

The problems were exacerbated by delays on the Tube's Circle, District and Hammersmith and City lines after a signal failure at Edgware Road.

Queues: Once inside West Croydon station the waiting continues.
Noor

Crystal Palace, New Cross Gate, Forest Hill and West Croydon were among the stations which were temporarily closed during the morning rush hour.

Londoners also said South West Trains services were “dangerously overcrowded” as people piled on to get to work.

Delays: Commuters trying to get to work.
Shiv Amin

Wednesday was the 32nd day of strike action to hit the beleaguered railway since the start of the dispute. Aslef’s 1,000 Southern drivers are this week staging three days of walk-outs in the long-running row over the introduction of driver-only trains.

Anthony Smith, chief executive of transport watchdog Transport Focus, said "tempers were fraying" on the Northern line on Wednesday morning.

Tube strike chaos

1/17

Passengers' fury was vented on social media with many saying the overcrowding was "unsafe".

Sharron Louise May said on Twitter: “This really is a joke now. Do you have any idea how many other people’s jobs are being ruined because of strikes.”

Others complained they were forced to wait for more than an hour because of reports of overcrowding - but claimed trains were being run with few people on them.

Rich Stephenson said: "Hey @TfL thanks for holding people outside #WestCroydon for over an hour while running trains 75% empty".

Paul Hayward said: "@TfL Why the hell are people at W. Croydon being crammed into the station for 'Health and Safety Reasons' when your trains are so empty?"

Overcrowding: 'Thought yesterday was bad; this is plain ridiculous.'
Morgan Calton

Many Londoners hit out at the transport disruption after they were late for work.

Twitter user Josie said: "Talk about morning commutes! 45 mins to get from Forest Gate - Liverpool Street. All thanks to overcrowding on the trains."

Andrew Devlin shared a picture of a packed Tube station with the workds: "Why is it continually impossible for me to get to work on time regardless of time I leave?"

London's roads were also reported to be extra busy as workers abandoned the trains altogether and took buses and cars to get to work.

A spokeswoman for Transport for London told the Standard staff were forced to temporarily close Overground stations because of crowd control.

"Because there's no trains on Southern, a lot of people are obviously using our Overground services," she said.

A spokeswoman for Govia Thameslink Railway said: "We are deeply sorry for the unnecessary and unwarranted disruption this dispute is causing. These strikes are utterly disproportionate, causing misery to 300,000 passengers a day across the South East and untold damage to the regional economy.”

"The unions claim this is about safety, but Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Railways has carried out a thorough and robust review and has ruled what we are doing is safe.

"It is now time the union stopped abusing their power to call unjustified strikes and join us in delivering a modern railway for everyone."

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in