Thursday 16 June 2022 08:40 AM How RMT rail strike will affect London Underground and Overground trends now

Hospitality chiefs today said the national rail strike will cost the sector £540million over the week amid a 20 per cent drop in sales, hit 'fragile consumer confidence' and could 'deliver a fatal financial blow' to some firms. 

The warning came as the devastating impact of next week's strikes on the London Underground and Overground emerged, with transport bosses saying customers are 'strongly encouraged not to travel' at certain times.

'Severe disruption or no service' is expected on all Tube lines from the start of next Tuesday until at least 8am on Wednesday due to action by the Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) and Unite unions in a row over jobs and pay.

Transport for London added that buses and Docklands Light Railway services will be running during this period, but are likely to be 'extremely busy with queues to board' and some stations could be closed for 'safety reasons'.

London Overground and Elizabeth line services will also be affected between next Tuesday and Sunday due to the wider national RMT strike by members at Network Rail and 13 UK rail operators on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.

This will also impact all commuter services in and out of the capital run by the likes of c2c, Chiltern, Southeastern, Southern, Thameslink, Greater Anglia, Great Northern, South Western and London Northwestern - as well as long-distance lines such as Great Western, LNER, Avanti West Coast, East Midlands, Grand Central and Hull Trains. 

As hopes fade that the strike will be called off, UKHospitality chief executive Kate Nicholls told MailOnline: 'For a devastated hospitality industry beginning its tentative post-pandemic recovery, the planned strike action couldn't come at a worse time, and might deliver a fatal financial blow to those businesses already struggling to survive. 

'A rail strike will cost the sector £540million across the week, based on a 20 per cent drop in sales where a typical June week sees £2.75billion takings. Fragile consumer confidence will take a further hit, thousands of people able and willing to spend money in hospitality venues across the country will be prevented from doing so, while staff will undoubtedly struggle to even get to work. We should all be pulling in the same direction if we're to get the UK economy back on track, and want to see urgent and productive talks to avoid widespread disruption, next week.' 

TfL said its teams from Santander Cycles will be ensuring hire bicycles are 'distributed at key locations according to demand' and told commuters that 'walking or cycling may be quicker for some journeys' during the action.

They also warned of a reduced service on the Overground and newly-opened Elizabeth line on the days when strike action is planned – Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday – 'due to the national rail strike and its impacts on shared track and assets'. The Overground will run a limited service between 7.30am and 6.30pm on these days. 

On Thursday and Saturday, TfL hopes to operate as much of the Tube as possible because its teams will not be on strike then, but disruption is expected from Queen's Park to Harrow and Wealdstone on the Bakerloo line; on the Richmond and Wimbledon branches of the District line; on the Waterloo and City line; and on the Elizabeth line.

TfL said problems from the national rail strike will continue to affect customers on the mornings when no strike action is planned, those being next Wednesday, Friday and Sunday - and urged Tube customers using sections of lines affected by national rail strike action to avoid making journeys until mid-morning on each of these days.

Continued RMT strike action on Night Tube services is also planned on the evenings of next Friday and Saturday, but TfL still hopes to run three trains per hour on the Victoria and Jubilee lines and two per hour on the Central.

TfL's chief operating officer Andy Lord said: 'I want to apologise to customers who will be impacted by the RMT and Unite's strike action next week. 

'The action on June 21, taking place at the same time as the national rail strike, will have a severe impact on the London Underground network, resulting in very little to no service on all lines, which is why we're encouraging people to avoid travel unless completely necessary, as the majority of Tube stations will be closed and services not running.'

'Alternatives to the Tube are likely to be much busier than usual and we expect the severe disruption caused by this strike to continue into the morning of June 22. I'm very sorry for the impact this will have on people's journeys.

'This strike is particularly frustrating as it comes so soon after industrial action earlier this month, no changes have been proposed to pensions and nobody has or will lose their job as a result of the proposals we have set out. 

'We're urging the RMT and Unite to call off this strike and to work with us to find a resolution and avoid the huge disruption this action will cause to people's journeys and to our economic recovery.'

TfL said the strike action comes as part of separate disputes with both the RMT, over pensions, jobs and conditions; and with Unite over pay. Bosses said this was 'despite the fact no proposals have been tabled on pensions or terms and conditions, and nobody has or will lose their jobs because of the proposals TfL has set out'.

TfL met the RMT and Unite unions at the conciliation service ACAS yesterday morning, saying that 'although no resolution was reached', they are 'keen to take part in further talks in the hope that this strike can be called off'. Bosses added that 'pay talks with Unite and other recognised unions in the area are due to start imminently'.

TfL has been forced to speed up its 'pre-pandemic savings programme' because the Government has required it to work towards achieving financial sustainability on operations by April 2023 as part of previous funding agreements.

Bosses have proposed not recruiting into around 500 to 600 posts as they become vacant – including 250 currently unfilled Tube station posts, but insist stations will remain staffed at all times while trains are operating, with more than 4,500 station staff available across the network.

Meanwhile, it is feared Britain's cities could be cut off from one another and NHS patients may put under increased risk if militant left-wing union barons push ahead with a once-in-a-generation set of strikes that will cripple more than half of the country's railway network.

Major towns stretching from Dorset, Cheshire, Wales and Scotland will have no links at all while other parts of the UK will also be affected when half of all services shut down during the walkout of 40,000 RMT union members on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday next week.

Travel on Wednesday, Friday and Sunday will also be badly affected due to the knock-on impacts of the industrial action, while economists have warned their action could cost Britain's stalling economy up to £150million.

Some of the 13 rail operators affected by the action – including Southeastern, TransPennine and Avanti West Coast – urged customers to travel only if necessary as rail chiefs prepared to publish the emergency timetable.

Meanwhile, Health Secretary Sajid Javid blasted Labour leadership's support for the debilitating strikes that could see nurses and doctors have to battle to get into work and patients' routine appointments cancelled.

Louise Quick, who was forced into a £54 ticket change charge when she changed a scan at Great Ormond Street for her nine-month-old son Julian, said the rail strikes were blocking 'vital service' for desperate patients, the Telegraph reported. 

GCSE and A-level pupils who have worked hard all year and are now expecting to sit their crucial end of year exams will also have to endure major disruption, it was warned.

As millions of Britons now face the prospect of having no choice but to work from home for all of next week, the RMT and Unite will also be striking on the Underground next Tuesday in a separate row over jobs and pay. 

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps slammed the 'reckless, unnecessary strike' as he vowed to fight back against the hardline left-wing union bosses who plan on crippling the country with modernising reforms of Network Rail.

Writing in The Sun, Mr Shapps insisted he would lead the battle against the RMT's 'dinosaurs' who continue to push 'out of date' working practices that were no longer fit for purpose. 

And economists are already predicting this wave of strikes to cost the UK economy at least £91million, according to the Centre for Economics and Business Research, proving devastating for the night-time and hospitality industries in particular.

It comes as an industry leader warned militant unions will 'play into the hands' of the work from home culture if they ploughed ahead with plans for the largest rail strikes in a generation.

Tim Shoveller, chief negotiator for Network Rail, said the walkouts could put commuters off the railways just as passenger numbers and revenues were starting to recover from the pandemic.

He said that the action would be 'a reminder of working from home full time and the benefits some people will see from that'.

'It will do us harm,' Mr Shoveller said. 'It's reminding commuters that for some of them, they quite like using Microsoft Teams to work and avoid travelling by train, that doesn't seem like a great plan to me. It's actually playing to the weakness of the situation – with Teams and Zoom being our biggest competitors now.'

A survey by the Office for National Statistics has found that one in seven adults who travel to work do so by railway. Half of them said they would work from home if they were unable to catch a train.

Network Rail chief executive Andrew Haines said the strikes were a 'high-stakes gamble' by the RMT to cause maximum disruption.

He also conceded there was no 'real hope' of a breakthrough in talks. Mr Haines added: 'It's absolutely a gamble by the RMT that somehow more money will be found, even though this is a particularly punitive way of harming the users of the railway and, as a consequence, the finances of the railway.'

Conservative MP Andrew Bridgen told MailOnline: 'I would say it is a de facto lockdown, with all the damage that we know that inflicts not just on the economy, but also to health. The fact is that it is going to cause extreme damage to the economy and the country. 

'And the fact that it is happening now, when we are barely recovering from Covid economically, our economic growth is sluggish, and after having poured huge sums of money into the rail services to keep them going the pandemic - I think it is both disappointing and irresponsible. And the fact that Labour are actually supporting the strikes - well, they just can't help themselves, can they?'

Network Rail said no passenger services will serve locations such as Penzance in Cornwall, Bournemouth in Dorset, Swansea in South Wales, Holyhead in North Wales, Chester in Cheshire and Blackpool in Lancashire.

There will also be no passenger trains running north from Glasgow or Edinburgh, and the number of passenger services on the three strike days is expected to be limited to around 4,500 compared with 20,000 normally.

Services that run will do so for only 11 hours, meaning they will start significantly later and finish earlier than usual. The last train from London to Edinburgh will depart at 2pm, compared with around 8.30pm on a typical weekday.

The total number of passenger services on strike days is expected to be limited to around 4,500 – 20 per cent of the usual figure. Only around 12,000 to 14,000 services will be able to run on the days following the strikes because signallers and control staff will not work overnight shifts that begin on the strike dates.

Some rural areas are likely to be completely cut off because they do not have automated signalling.

As preparations were ramped up, the impact was being felt across Britain with in-person conferences switched to online, concerns over music fans travelling to Glastonbury and people's plans to attend other events cancelled.

It comes after Junction 2 music festival at Trent Park in North London was cancelled last Friday just eight days before it was due to happen 'due to ongoing industrial action taking place across the London transport network'.

And Dee Corsi, chief operating officer of the New West End Company group in London, told MailOnline: 'Next week's proposed rail strikes are expected to bring London's West End, and the wider country, to a grinding halt. This will be a particular blow for commuters reliant on these services to get into the capital - and other city centres for work - and retail and hospitality businesses that are already struggling with rising costs and staffing shortages.

'With international visitor numbers still recovering from the impact of the pandemic, it is frustrating to see fresh disruptions that

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