LU admits that stations are understaffed

[Nortube]

www.standard.co.uk/news/transport/tube-strike-last-ditch-talks-set-for-saturday-in-bid-to-avert-crippling-24hour-walkout-a3434856.html

...... "Steve Griffiths, Chief Operating Officer for London Underground, said: “We encourage the unions to continue working with us on this process and we are available for talks at all times through the weekend in order to resolve this dispute.”

He added: “There is no need to strike. We had always intended to review staffing levels and have had constructive discussions with the unions. We agree that we need more staff in our stations and have already started to recruit 150 extra staff.

Read more

TfL warns 'most Zone 1 stations will shut' during 24-hour Tube strike

“This number is bound to increase as we work through the other areas that need to be addressed.

“Taking into account existing vacancies and natural turnover this means that around 500 staff will be recruited for stations this year. There will also be increased opportunities for promotion." .....


Meanwhile, on the Northern line at least, a normal timetabled service will be running all day from normal start to normal finish times on Sunday and Monday - its just that the trains will be running empty after 19:00 on Sunday. On Monday, trains will run empty from normal start-up until 07:00 and from later on in the evening. 

Between these times, trains will run between Morden - Kennington in passenger service, then empty to Golders Green / East Finchley.

As I think that a 95 stock potentially holds 900 - 1000 people when packed, it will be interesting to see how the lifts at Kennington cope with a train load of passengers every 1½ mins in the AM rush hour!

I assume that other lines (other than the Victoria line which will be closed) may run a similar sort of service, running empty as necessary.

As there are still ACAS talks due tomorrow (Saturday), it's possible that the strike may still be called off at the last minute.

Strike service details from TfL:
tfl.gov.uk/campaign/tube-strike

 

[drico]

Yet another cock up by management get rid of staff , move them around, ask them to work lots of overtime, it's as bad as it was after Company plan.

[railtechnician]

Jan 11, 2017 10:29:09 GMT drico said:

Yet another cock up by management get rid of staff , move them around, ask them to work lots of overtime, it's as bad as it was after Company plan.

The trouble is that staff natural wastage has always been a big issue but in recent years many station staff have moved on quickly to become drivers, people these days are very ambitious despite their lack of general LU knowledge and experience. I don't believe that devolution of lines was ever an appropriate strategy, today there are so many cooks and not enough bottle washers, far too many pen pushers creating statistics to massage the KPIs, far too much duplication in management, a complete lack of standardisation of rolling stock and signalling systems, little real vision papering over the cracks instead of opening up the deep tube to standard gauge or closing those lines and building new ones to replace them. In effect a hotpotch of organisations in a corporate wrapping with an awful lot of wasted £taxpayers in its wake and the 'customers' being short changed week after week after week propping up a crumbling infrastructure instead of replacing it.

It's a big issue well beyond the scope of the short term thinkers in LUL management and the incompetent and negligent politicians that have starved it financially for decades. it should by now have been an efficient and most modern metropolitan rail network in the world but it is far from it, just wait for driverless trains and you'll really appreciate the current staffing levels on stations!

[Nearlyretired]

No deep tube line will ever run driverless
This was ONLY in the mind of Boris Johnson
to rubbish drivers during strike action to
get the public on his side!