International Subways

Londoners, coping with a transit worker strike, walk home from work on Tuesday. (Photo by flickr user Orhan*)

As New York sits on the brink of a taxi strike that, as SUBWAYblogger accurately notes, won’t be noticeable in the morning, our London brethren across the Atlantic spent Tuesday coping with day one of a potential three-day transit strike. Well, much like the over-hyped taxi strike, the London transit strike won’t turn out to be as bad as expected.

While Wednesday’s rush-hour commute for Londoners will still be rife with problems, the strike — or at least this week’s strike — has been halted after productive talks between the two sides. The workers still have the option to walk out of the job next Monday as originally planned, but by Wednesday afternoon, things should be back to normal in London.

Lucky them. Our transit strike lasted a legitimate three days. The Guardian has more:

Millions of London commuters are facing further travel misery this morning, even though the RMT union last night suspended its strike which brought the bulk of London’s tube network to a halt …

Sources said the breakthrough in the negotiations had come too late to prevent further disruption during today’s morning rush hour, though a deal could see services improve later in the day. The latest development came as the RMT was under increasing political pressure to halt a dispute which had led to the suspension of nine of the 12 tube lines.

As I noted yesterday, the maintenance workers are concerned about securing guaranteed pensions after Metronet, one of the public-private partnerships tasked with running nine of the 12 tube lines, entered bankruptcy. While Transport for London, the other PPP, is trying to assume control of those nine lines, for now, the Rail, Maritime and Transport Union workers want Metronet to secure their futures.

London, a more frequent victim of transit strikes and 24-hour worker industrial actions, will be relieved to see things return to some semblance of normalcy this week. And I’ll return to the MTA and New York (and mislabeled subway stations) now that the fun in London appears to be over.

Remember back in the dark ages of December 2005 when TWU workers struck for three days? Remember when New Yorkers had to walk for miles and miles to get to work and many of them simply telecommuted for a few days? Remember how the middle of winter sure seemed like a terrible time for a transit strike?

Well, think back fondly on those three days and be thankful you’re not in London. At 6 p.m. British Standard Time this evening, 2300 maintenance workers employed by Metronet, the bankrupt public-private partnership tasked with running nine of the 12 London Underground lines, went on strike. With no workers around to maintain the system, Transport for London shut down those nine lines, and they will remain inactive until Friday morning. The New York Times has more:

London’s subway network virtually shut down at the height of the rush hour on Monday evening when 2,300 maintenance workers walked off the job in what they said would be a three-day strike over pensions and security.

Transportation officials then closed nine subway lines, the bulk of the system. They said it was too dangerous to keep the network going without the workers, who are responsible for maintaining and repairing tracks, signals, trains and the like. Just three lines — the Jubilee, Northern and Piccadilly lines, which are maintained by workers who belong to another union — were operating Monday night.

While New Yorkers may simply say that Londoners are going through what we went through two years ago, matters are first worse in London. First, these transit workers are threatening to strike for another 72 hours starting next Monday if their demands are not met and fears are not assuaged by Friday morning. Additionally, in a move sure to embolden the anti-congestion fee lobby in New York, London mayor Ken Livingston has rankled many would-be drivers when he announced that London’s eight-pound congestion charge would stand during the strike.

The problems in London, as The New York Times explains and The Times of London outlines in this article, stems from problems surrounding Metronet. When the Tubes fell under the auspices of this public-private partnership, Livingston foresaw financial problems such as this one.

In July, Metronet entered administration, the British equivalent of the American concept of receivership. The workers are worried that pensions and job security will not be guaranteed if and when Transport for London completes its bid to take over the Tube lines currently run by Metronet.

Meanwhile, London economists are predicting losses of up to £50 million, and 3.2 million potential London straphangers are left struggling to find alternate routes home. Plus, they could get to do it all over again next week.

Sounds like a blast, no?

The McGill Metro stop in Montreal was literally falling down this weekend (Photo by flickr user blork)

Subways all over the globe had issues this weekend, and after yesterday’s post noting the problems in China and Washington, DC, my readers were more than happy to share their experiences in subway systems that just can’t measure up to New York’s.

The best tip came from Greg who e-mailed me about the problems in Montreal. On Friday, officials shut down the McGill Metro stop in Montreal when two large cracks were discovered in the tunnels linking the subway station to a nearby mall. That sounds like fun. CBC News had more:

Police emptied buildings and sealed off a large section of Montreal’s downtown core for the weekend, and service was cancelled on part of one subway line after two fissures in a tunnel linking the McGill station to malls were discovered Friday…

Fearing that roads could collapse, Montreal police cleared several city blocks of people in an area bordered by Sherbrooke, St. Catherine and Bleury streets and University Avenue, and shut the streets to traffic.

With a major university laying claim to this subway stop, New Yorkers can imagine this infrastructure issue happening right here in the playground that is the West Village. Imagine if deep fissures appeared in the ceiling at the West 4th St. stop (which is not hard to picture if you’ve looked closely at that station lately). Not only would the city be collectively flipping out, but service on up to 8 subway lines would be messed up.

So as the week rolls on and the State Comptroller tells us that the MTA doesn’t really need that fare hike, we can yet again be grateful that the tracks aren’t catching fire as they are in Washington, D.C., and that the sky — or ceiling — isn’t falling like it is in Montreal. Yet.