Travellers to, from and within the UK face difficult journeys over the August bank holiday weekend with cancelled trains, gridlocked roads, long delays at French ferry ports and airports at full stretch.
National rail strikes resume on Saturday 26 August, when the RMT union calls out up to 20,000 members. Staff employed by 14 train operators in England, including the leading intercity and commuter firms, will walk out – triggering the cancellation of thousands of trains.
The stoppage is the latest in a long and bitter dispute over pay and working arrangements. The effects will be exacerbated by planned Network Rail engineering work. Thousands of trains have been cancelled. On parts of the rail network, a skeleton service will run during limited hours but many lines and stations will have no trains.
No trains will run to, from or within Cornwall.
South Western Railway, the operator to and from London Waterloo, the UK’s busiest station, is warning: “Customers should only travel if their journeys are absolutely necessary.”
Transport for Wales and ScotRail are unaffected, though on routes that they share with English train operators services are likely to be busier than normal. Monday 28 August is a working day in Scotland, with no bank holiday. Many trains on Friday and Sunday will be crowded as travellers seek to avoid the latest strike day.
The rail walk-out will add to pressure on roads. Overall the AA expects traffic to be busiest on Friday, while the RAC predicts the highest number of leisure trips on Saturday.
Using data from Inrix, the RAC says more than three million journeys will be made – with peak pressure between 10am and 3pm on Saturday.
Motorists returning from northern France to Dover could encounter long queues at Calais and Dunkirk for French and British frontier formalities.
In the skies, Friday is expected to be extremely busy. With Europe’s air-traffic control providers warning of high demand, delays to flights could swiftly build.
Rail
The latest RMT strike in Saturday will wreck the travel plans of millions of passengers, particularly families returning from holidays. In addition the walk-out will hit music fans attending festivals in Leeds and Reading Festival over the late August bank holiday, rugby supporters attending the England v Fiji match at Twickenham and a full Saturday programme of football…
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