London Banter - View Single Post - New years day service

Steve Fitzgerald · January 2nd 10, 07:00 PM posted to uk.transport.london

In message ,
writes

So 250,000 people turning up for the new years day parade is
insufficient demand? Who knows how many would have gone if the tube
service had been better.

Apparently another 250,000 people made it. I assume they walked ;-)

Was it half a mil? Guess LBC got it wrong.

Anyway , that just makes my point even more valid.

I'd be surprised if LUL have enough drivers to run a more frequent
service than they did.

Presumably New Year's Day is a bigger example of the LM/FCC drivers not
wanting to work on days they don't have to?

To be honest it doesn't work like that on LUL.

Since company plan (as the old boys tell me) LUL drivers are salaried
staff contracted to work 5 days a week - that's any 5 days out of 7
every week come hell or high water, subject to leave.

This means that public holidays (even Christmas day) are a normal
working day for us and if you are rostered to work it then work you do.
I was booked rest day so I didn't work. The problem is that when NYD is
a weekday, as it was, there will be an excess of drivers as the normal
weekday numbers will be rostered to work. This number is reduced to the
requirements of the timetable offered and the excess either sit 'spare'
or take a day of their leave. Of course, on Christmas day everybody is
either rest day or takes a days leave.

So the answer to the original post (which I didn't see and I'll leave
that as an exercise for the reader to work out why) we could have
actually run a pretty full weekday timetable and had the staff to do it.
TfL (or whoever) decided to offer the service that was run.
--
Steve Fitzgerald has now left the building.
You will find him in London's Docklands, E16, UK
(please use the reply to address for email)