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I don't think that maintaining attention during long repetitive tasks can possibly be as draining as actually driving. I don't have any experience of train driving but driving cars is always much less draining if they have cruise control and I don't have to focus on maintaining speed constantly.
Driving a car on a motorway consumes a lot less mental capacity than driving down a narrow country lane. But the flip side of that is that attention wanders. Ever driven down a motorway and suddenly realise you're ten miles down the road with no recollection of how you got there? I have. It's not that I wasn't driving safely or wasn't concentrating, I was just doing it on a mental autopilot.
The trouble is, that doesn't really translate well into the railway. You need to be on high alert and concentrating at all times. That's actually a lot harder when you don't have the mental load to sustain it.
Firstly, some years ago they made a concerted effort to recruit people to the CSA role with proven experience of "customer service" and seemed to prioritise people from the higher quality retail environments. Excellent, and just what a company needs for a customer facing role.
The trouble with that policy is that people with good customer service skills are not always the kind of people who have the technical skills needed to operate a train on London Underground. This is no fault of the potential train operator applicants - some people are simply more suited to some roles and some more suited to other roles.
Secondly, more recently, there are a lot of candidates that are coming from office based roles around the business. Some of them have never worked in an operational area of the business, and for example, have no idea about the impact of shift work and the levels of fatigue it can generate. Again, this is not a fault of the staff applying, but more a comment regarding the recruitment process and filtering of applicants.
Obviously I am not generalising about these groups of people, and there will be a number of people who have all the skills required. Indeed, I have met people who have come from both of the above mentioned groups of people and have proven themselves to excellent train ops.
I think it's telling that LU have recently completely overhauled the recruitment process for train operators and brought in an external company to redesign the entire process from start to finish. Is this an admission that LU haven't been recruiting the right candidates for some time?
Relatedly, LU have similar issues recruiting quality applicants to the Customer Service Supervisor (CSS) role, with internal campaigns running almost endlessly. This is why they recently advertised this role externally.
For the avoidance of doubt, TfL do have the option to recruit externally and have done so on numerous occasions over the years - most recently when night tube started.
This is going to sound incredibly naive but why are people who have never worked in operational parts of TfL applying to be Tube Drivers? Surely the work/life balance alone would not be appealing.
Did anyone end up using the Victoria line yesterday, particularly the southern bit to Brixton? I ardently avoided it and used Southern instead, but I'm curious if it was actually busy with trains only being every five minutes.
This is going to sound incredibly naive but why are people who have never worked in operational parts of TfL applying to be Tube Drivers? Surely the work/life balance alone would not be appealing.
Did anyone end up using the Victoria line yesterday, particularly the southern bit to Brixton? I ardently avoided it and used Southern instead, but I'm curious if it was actually busy with trains only being every five minutes.
I got on it at around 8 this morning from Finsbury Park to Oxford Circus - was like a normal morning. The Great Northern I took beforehand south to Finsbury Park was not too bad either - when the Piccadilly is down its usually horrendous!
All my co-workers remarked that it was completely fine too, even for people travelling a bit later around the busier part of the morning peak. Lots of us are in today - no disasters it seems.
The 5 minutes thing is a lie, its more like 3-4 by the way. E.g. right now for Oxford Circus (I realise that's from now however most lines seem to still be on strike frequencies / suspended - but you'll have to trust me it was similar earlier! I think the board was 2, 6, 9, 14 when I got to Finsbury Park.
This is going to sound incredibly naive but why are people who have never worked in operational parts of TfL applying to be Tube Drivers? Surely the work/life balance alone would not be appealing.
To be fair I had never worked in an "operational" part of anything when I first applied to be a train driver, but I just knew that it was something I really wanted to try.
It's a fact of life that most people are either well suited to customer-facing work or they aren't. Both groups have many advantages but some people thrive in environments where they are dealing with the general public day in, day out, and some don't.
Unfortunately while there is a bit of a crossover, for example some bus drivers are excellent at both a safe operational independent role and also providing great in-person customer service, like giving directions to people who are lost, there's very often a dividing line there. Usually people who would be the best at customer service roles aren't the people who would be ideal train drivers, and the ideal train drivers would not be well suited to customer-facing jobs. You see this all the time with conductors, some purely do it for a few years as a way to move to a driving role, some wouldn't want to drive as it removes them from speaking to people.
Many people could turn their hand to both but when you're thinking of the most ideal candidates from a pool, you need to consider how you're actually going to get the best quality of applications.
Are you saying the internal candidates aren’t high enough quality? Considering this is the only route LU take, they must disagree as otherwise they’d open it up to wider pool.
It would be interesting to see the percentage of people who get through the recruitment process - it's probably a small fraction of shortlisted applications. I spent some time shadowing in a LU service control centre and was told something like 5% of applicants get through the controller application process, and this pays a similar amount to the train operator role.
This is going to sound incredibly naive but why are people who have never worked in operational parts of TfL applying to be Tube Drivers? Surely the work/life balance alone would not be appealing.
The job pays a very good salary while providing training from scratch, negating the need for qualifications like a degree to apply. The perception is it's an achievable way to earn £70k+ for a job where you're not effectively on call 24/7, plus there's an element of status/respect attached to it. Many people do shift work for far less money. I've worked for the Underground in an office role as well as frontline roles on the railways and it's fair to say becoming a train operator/driver is a dream for a significant proportion of people in other grades. The reality is there's a lot of knowledge to acquire and retain along with other skills to be able to do the job, not everybody who thinks "how hard can it be" will necessarily consider or be able to do this.
I've never had any interest in driving trains - it's a job that holds lot of responsibility and requires a certain type and level of concentration. I take my hat off to those who do it. The money isn't a consideration as I don't really subscribe to the whole "salaried work is the only way to make a living" thing that's pushed on people.
Firstly, some years ago they made a concerted effort to recruit people to the CSA role with proven experience of "customer service" and seemed to prioritise people from the higher quality retail environments. Excellent, and just what a company needs for a customer facing role.
The trouble with that policy is that people with good customer service skills are not always the kind of people who have the technical skills needed to operate a train on London Underground. This is no fault of the potential train operator applicants - some people are simply more suited to some roles and some more suited to other roles.
Secondly, more recently, there are a lot of candidates that are coming from office based roles around the business. Some of them have never worked in an operational area of the business, and for example, have no idea about the impact of shift work and the levels of fatigue it can generate. Again, this is not a fault of the staff applying, but more a comment regarding the recruitment process and filtering of applicants.
Obviously I am not generalising about these groups of people, and there will be a number of people who have all the skills required. Indeed, I have met people who have come from both of the above mentioned groups of people and have proven themselves to excellent train ops.
I think it's telling that LU have recently completely overhauled the recruitment process for train operators and brought in an external company to redesign the entire process from start to finish. Is this an admission that LU haven't been recruiting the right candidates for some time?
Relatedly, LU have similar issues recruiting quality applicants to the Customer Service Supervisor (CSS) role, with internal campaigns running almost endlessly. This is why they recently advertised this role externally.
For the avoidance of doubt, TfL do have the option to recruit externally and have done so on numerous occasions over the years - most recently when night tube started.
Oh don’t get me wrong I don’t necessarily think it’s correct to go wholly internal and indeed in certain other roles they seem to be considering it. I recall when they had massive shortages at Hammersmith control, but were only advertising internally yet struggling to attract candidates…
Train op seems solidly to remain in the internal only option and I can see why. I also understand LU/TfL could advertise externally (as you say they did for night tube) but often choose not to.
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This is going to sound incredibly naive but why are people who have never worked in operational parts of TfL applying to be Tube Drivers? Surely the work/life balance alone would not be appealing.
It would be interesting to see the percentage of people who get through the recruitment process - it's probably a small fraction of shortlisted applications. I spent some time shadowing in a LU service control centre and was told something like 5% of applicants get through the controller application process, and this pays a similar amount to the train operator role.
Which is fair enough. You want to make sure you’ve got a rigorous process in place to get exactly the right fit in what can be a demanding role. There’s no perfect assessment process, but a mix of tools is often applied, especially for competitive, high responsibility (and high pay) jobs. The hassle of hiring someone into those roles who isn’t fit for the job is laborious, not to mention all the costs associated with it.
How is the resumption of service going since the nominal 1159 resumption? Planning to use the H&C/Circle between Baker Street and Liverpool Street at around 4pm, but happy to use Bakerloo and Central if it's any better. I naively expected things to be returning to normal by late afternoon!
I have time to walk to Bond Street and use the Elizabeth Line, if needed.
I got on it at around 8 this morning from Finsbury Park to Oxford Circus - was like a normal morning. The Great Northern I took beforehand south to Finsbury Park was not too bad either - when the Piccadilly is down its usually horrendous!
All my co-workers remarked that it was completely fine too, even for people travelling a bit later around the busier part of the morning peak. Lots of us are in today - no disasters it seems.
The 5 minutes thing is a lie, its more like 3-4 by the way. E.g. right now for Oxford Circus (I realise that's from now however most lines seem to still be on strike frequencies / suspended - but you'll have to trust me it was similar earlier! I think the board was 2, 6, 9, 14 when I got to Finsbury Park.
The first train into Central London on the Central Line departed Shepherds Bush at 1320 on the eastbound and the first westbound train to Central London departed Liverpool Street at roughly the same time. Some trains were turned short at Marble Arch to help with the lumpy intervals on the eastbound.
This is going to sound incredibly naive but why are people who have never worked in operational parts of TfL applying to be Tube Drivers? Surely the work/life balance alone would not be appealing.
Yes plenty of people end up in the role, along with other operational ones, and then find they either can’t or in some cases won’t take what comes with that, aspects like shifts, weekends, public holidays, 7 days in a row, not being able to drink alcohol at times, etc etc.
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Oh don’t get me wrong I don’t necessarily think it’s correct to go wholly internal and indeed in certain other roles they seem to be considering it. I recall when they had massive shortages at Hammersmith control, but were only advertising internally yet struggling to attract candidates…
Hammersmith is a special case as the specific location has gained a reputation for being a very bad place to work.
More broadly, LU will often cut their nose to spite their face. I know someone with about 25 years of highly relevant experience, applied for and was successful in gaining the service controller grade, but stated he was only prepared to work in one location. LU wouldn’t play ball with this (despite there being numerous vacancies there), so he told them to do one. A few weeks later he then had a phone call saying he could have a position at that particular location after all, but by this time he was sufficiently hacked off that he again just told them to do one. Meanwhile the vacancy list remained as long as the proverbial arm. Sometimes LU management need to accept that beggars can’t be choosers.
It’s a bit like weights in the gym, sometimes LU management need to drop their ego, which brings us back to the current strike action.
Even if that was the case - I’m not convinced! - my point being that if reputation is an issue, then going external would resolve the issue as a) they may not be as concerned/aware by/of the perceived issue and b) if it’s an issue with staff culture, fresh blood may resolve or at least lessen that problem.
As you say, sometimes rigidly sticking to an idea has its consequences.
Even if that was the case - I’m not convinced! - my point being that if reputation is an issue, then going external would resolve the issue as a) they may not be as concerned/aware by/of the perceived issue and b) if it’s an issue with staff culture, fresh blood may resolve or at least lessen that problem.
As you say, sometimes rigidly sticking to an idea has its consequences.
In the case of Hammersmith it isn’t really a culture issue, more that the facilities have a reputation for being dire, plus as a location it’s hard to reach. Similar reason why the Central Line also has perennial vacancies.
If you consider the role has a high failure rate anyway, even if you were to put externals there there’s a likelihood a good number will decide the whole package isn’t for them.
In theory there ought to be a high supply of viable candidates from the signal cabins, however this doesn’t seem to have been the case in practice. I don’t think I would be too keen on going from a cabin to somewhere with a reputation of being HMP Hammersmith.
The Bakerloo line seems to be alone in running every couple of minutes and virtually empty... so I am doing Marylebone-Paddington-Liverpool St rather than Baker St-Liverpool St. Baker Street has some very long gaps in service still
In the case of Hammersmith it isn’t really a culture issue, more that the facilities have a reputation for being dire, plus as a location it’s hard to reach. Similar reason why the Central Line also has perennial vacancies.
It's a very odd London way of thinking to say that Hammersmith is "hard to reach"!
It does depend anyway, because those with service control backgrounds at other TOCs or place like Overground / DLR might be well suited to it. Anyway, there doesn't seem to be the same issue any more.
Did anyone end up using the Victoria line yesterday, particularly the southern bit to Brixton? I ardently avoided it and used Southern instead, but I'm curious if it was actually busy with trains only being every five minutes.
Used yesterday and today - no problems at all. Agree that 5 minutes by and large wasn't my experience, I was at Victoria around 16:15 yesterday afternoon and I walked straight onto a train with another 2 minutes behind. This morning had a 3 min wait at Seven Sisters southbound, but because a lot of people are not travelling, there was no problem boarding and getting a seat in the front carriage. 17:00ish travelling back this afternoon was a lot busier but was still able to board the first train.
It’s okay for people living west, albeit still not that easily accessible for people coming in off the GWML. But how easy is it to get there for an early turn, especially Sunday?
I’d also suggest that a disproportionate amount of service control staff live outside London, which will have a bearing on this.
For a role which has difficulty filling vacancies, it really needs to be open to the widest possible catchment; not that some of the other locations nowadays are that accessible either, but they don’t seem to have such an awful reputation.
This is going to sound incredibly naive but why are people who have never worked in operational parts of TfL applying to be Tube Drivers? Surely the work/life balance alone would not be appealing.
I think most people would look at the proposed terms and conditions, including the salary, weekly hours and the flexibility of a 4 day week for a semi-automatic job and on paper think it looked like the plushiest job in the country.
I think most people would look at the proposed terms and conditions, including the salary, weekly hours and the flexibility of a 4 day week for a semi-automatic job and on paper think it looked like the plushiest job in the country.
Exactly this, until they find they have to do it, and then experience issues like being tired all the time, have to completely plan all aspects of life around a roster, can’t do stuff at weekends, etc etc etc. This isn’t something which will change, there’s always going to be an element of people who take jobs on without considering or understanding the implications.
From TFL’s perspective, if it were me running things I’d be looking to make the role more attractive from a work/life balance perspective than necessarily promoting a high salary. In other words try to find ways of making the shifts less extreme (which IMO this 4DW proposal doesn’t, in fact on the contrary), reducing overall hours, making the working environment less unattractive, etc. If you really want to attract the best people, having an industrial slum for a workplace isn’t the way I’d be going about it.
(To be fair, I’m exaggerating a bit, but there’s certainly room for improvements).
It’s okay for people living west, albeit still not that easily accessible for people coming in off the GWML. But how easy is it to get there for an early turn, especially Sunday?
I’d also suggest that a disproportionate amount of service control staff live outside London, which will have a bearing on this.
In case anyone wants information overload, I took notes on the status updates/suspensions during the strike for future reference.
These are very approximate and probably have a load of mistakes in somewhere, so should not be relied on! Times given are the times I checked the status boards (I was busy!), not the times when the situation changed! And it’s probably guaranteed that future strikes will work out differently because a rare breed of flying kangaroo sneezed on a train, etc. TfL staff will have better info.
All delays/suspensions are due to strikes, unless otherwise stated. Click spoiler to see details
Tuesday
Before the strike - initial preparations (Tuesday until 1150):
Lines significantly affected: District, Central
Tuesday as of 1000
Central: minor delays due to train cancellations
Circle: suspended
District: severe delays
Piccadilly: minor delays Acton Town to Uxbridge due to train cancellations
1030
Jubilee and Piccadilly: minor delays
District: split into 3 service groups: Upminster to Olympia, Edgware Road to Wimbledon, High Street Kensington to Ealing Broadway/Richmond. There were some gaps including 18 min gap in zone 1 westbound. Departure boards in TfL Go were not always reliable - intertube was helpful
1050
Central: severe delays White City to West Ruislip/Ealing Broadway, Leytonstone to Epping/Hainault and Hainault to Woodford
Metropolitan, Victoria: minor delays
1118
Metropolitan: part suspended Baker street to Aldgate
Beginning of the strike (1150-1400)
Lines most affected: Piccadilly, Central, Jubilee, Bakerloo
We already have severe delays on the District and parts of the Central line, and minor delays on several lines. The Piccadilly line was the first major closure.
1150
Piccadilly: severe delays Acton Town to Heathrow/Uxbridge
1205
Central: severe delays
Jubilee: severe delays
1355
Bakerloo: severe delays and reduced service
Metropolitan: reduced service
Piccadilly: winding down. Suspended westbound between Cockfosters and Acton Town (I.e. trains were running to Cockfosters/Arnos Grove and going out of service there)
Northern: minor delays
Hammersmith & City: still good service!
Reduced service frequencies published for most lines (1420)
Most affected frequencies:
Metropolitan to Watford, Amersham/Chesham;
Subsurface lines route Hammersmith to Liverpool St via Kings Cross St Pancras
1420
Reduced service frequencies were published in the status updates (10m means train every 10 minutes). These were removed after a few hours, so presumably things became too unpredictable.
Bakerloo:
Elephant & Castle to Queen’s Park 8m
Queen’s Park to Harrow & Wealdstone 15m
District:
Ealing Broadway to High Street Kensington (HSK) 15m
Richmond to HSK 10m
Upminster to Olympia 10m
Wimbledon to Edgware Road - no duration stated
From the briefest of glances on Intertube there appears to be 15m wait on most of the District, possibly more west of Tower Hill and on the Ealing branch
Hammersmith & City: 20m
this is the entire service frequency between Hammersmith and Liverpool Street via Kings Cross St Pancras.
Jubilee: 6m
Metropolitan:
Harrow-on-the-Hill (HOH) to Baker Street 10m
HOH to Uxbridge 15m
HOH to Watford 20m (from 1625 this became 40m)
HOH to Amersham/Chesham 30m (unclear whether it’s both destinations every 30m, or only 1 of the destinations every 30m)
Northern: 10m (from 1505 this became 15m)
Victoria: 5m
Waterloo & City: 8m
Suspensions (1500 onwards)
Lines most affected: Piccadilly (a lot!), Central
1505
Piccadilly:
mostly suspended apart from Acton Town to Heathrow Terminal 4 via Heathrow Terminals 2 & 3 every 20 minutes.
No service on the rest of the line due to strike action. Services will finish early tonight so please complete your journey by 20:00.
Central:
part suspended between White City and Liverpool Street
Service frequencies:
West of White City 10m
Liverpool Street to Leytonstone 5m
Leytonstone to Hainault/Epping 10m
1625
Hammersmith & City: part suspended Liverpool Street to Barking due to a points failure. District line appeared to continue to operate on this stretch
1800
Waterloo & City: end of service
1955
District: I saw an apparent 30 minute service gap between Barking and Gloucester Road westbound on Intertube, but perhaps there was an error in the data.
End of service (2000 onwards)
2030
Bakerloo, Hammersmith & City, Piccadilly: suspended
District: part suspended Earl’s Court to Tower Hill
2200
All tube lines were suspended before this time
Wednesday
Start of service with many partial suspensions (0730 ish)
0730
TfL messages said no services before this time
0830–0900
Suspended:
Circle and Waterloo & City
Part Suspended:
Northern: no service Kennington to Morden. Rest of the line split (Edgware to Battersea, High Barnet to Kennington)
Bakerloo: no service Queens Park to Harrow & Wealdstone
Central: split as yesterday with no service White City to Liverpool St
Hammersmith & City: No service Aldgate East to Barking
Metropolitan: no service Baker Street to Aldgate.
Piccadilly: Arnos Grove to Cockfosters operating, rest of the line suspended
All tube lines that weren’t suspended were operating with a reduced frequency and severe delays.
District: service groups split around Earls Court as yesterday
A very limited, gradual recovery before the end of the strike (0930-1130)
Lines that did a bit better than you might have expected: Victoria, Bakerloo
0930
Victoria: recovered to minor delays
1130
Bakerloo: service resumed on whole line, severe delays
1200
End of strike period
Gradual recovery after strike ended (1345 onwards)
Lines most affected: Piccadilly (a lot!), Central, Metropolitan
It took over 2 hours for suspended sections to be unsuspended, and for TfL's statuses to improve.
However, true tube status said the Bakerloo, Jubilee and District lines improved faster than TfL’s statuses
1300
No observed change to TfL status updates yet since the end of the strike
However, True tube status was slightly more optimistic than TfL’s statuses. It said 2 lines had a better service than TfL’s status:
Bakerloo Severe Delays → Good Service
Jubilee Severe Delays → Minor Delays
7-16m gaps on the District line
1345
Piccadilly line shuttle starts - Acton Town to Heathrow Terminals 4 and Terminals 2 & 3
True tube status correction:
District Severe Delays → Minor delays
1415
Central and Metropolitan: service resumed on whole lines
District: some through service restored but severe delays
1530
Circle and Piccadilly: service resumed but with severe delays
1630
Piccadilly line had service gaps of 8-12 minutes
True tube status corrections:
Bakerloo: minor delays → good service
Circle: severe delays → minor delays
District, Hammersmith & City, Metropolitam, Northern: severe delays → good service
2020
Most lines had a good servic
Central, Piccadilly, Metropolitan had minor or (in part) severe delays
Firstly, many drivers, especially older ones, *don’t* want the change to the way the working week is divided up. They feel that 8.5 hours of intense tunnel metro work is enough, there’s nothing more to that than that. Whilst officially the whole thing is voluntary, there is scepticism about how that would work in practice.
Secondly there’s then the various other things which have been tagged on, ostensibly in order to make the whole thing work. If you don’t want changes to your disposition of days, why should you then be happy about a whole load of incidental changes to terms & conditions.
You can probably also add that faith and trust in LU’s management is pretty much non existent. As an institution, LU is not well run, and hasn’t been for many years, and their record on change programmes is similarly poor. It it was me, I would be on strike tomorrow.
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Three Golders Green-Edgware-Kennington-Golders Green rounders, half an hour meal break then same again, 4 mins at each terminus, in a cab the size of a broom cupboard with indifferent air conditioning, dust, constant noise, most of the duty in tunnel, stations every 2 mins and the increasingly problematic behaviour of the London population, compares disfavourably to even the worst mainline metro work. ATO doesn’t really help, in fact most drivers think this has made things *more* draining.
Oh and add on top of that LU’s sloppy management so on the day you’re spare you walk into same again, you then glance at the sheets and to rub salt in the wound the person you’re running for has barely touched a train in the last 7 years yet nothing seems to be done about it.
The frustrating thing about the MET on strike days is that the real time train information given on the likes of Bustimes which is normally pretty accurate is a work of fiction
It is of course on days like this that the information is most important
Eg last night at Harrow showing that the next Uxbridge has not yet reached Wembley as one pulls into Harrow and nothing on the boards
(To be totally fair the station did make an announcement that one was due a few minutes before it arrived)
With these strikes now over, do we know if there's going to be any new/further negotiations between TfL and the RMT before the next strikes in June? Or was TfL's offer final?
With these strikes now over, do we know if there's going to be any new/further negotiations between TfL and the RMT before the next strikes in June? Or was TfL's offer final?
We are aware of an issue with emails from the Forum to Microsoft-based email accounts (hotmail/outlook/live.com email addresses). This is being looked into currently, thanks for your patience meanwhile.
TfL staff will have better info.