City suffers as London Tube is tied over strike

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 wait to board buses in Brixton during a 24-hour tube strike. Pic/AFP

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” stopsclosed 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. Monday's walkout on the Tube, 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.

Meanwhile, commuters slammed cab-aggregator Uber for imposing surge pricing and tripling its fares during the strike. An Uber spokesman said: “The fare increases automatically and only in response to real-time demand when there are not enough available cars.”

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