Revolt! Day St Albans lost patience with train chaos
WHEN the Romans built St Albans on Watling Street it had the best communications in the country.
Ask locals these days and they’ll tell you their transport network has gone to the dogs – with continual rail disruption.
Yesterday, faced with yet more rush hour chaos, tempers boiled over – and commuters from the well-heeled ancient city began kicking at the station gates in frustration.
Passengers struck out and pushed through the gates after they were closed to prevent overcrowding.
Witnesses reported an ‘ absolute fiasco’ with ‘ crammed’ platforms. One tweeted: ‘Absolute chaos at St Albans and no communication. @TLRailUK how do you continuously get away with it? Absolute shambles of an organisation.’
Peter Saunders added: ‘Absolute fiasco here. Trains cancelled. Platforms crammed. Barriers closed. Staff abusive. Angry passengers kicking down gates.’
On this occasion the cause of the mayhem on Thameslink and East Midlands trains was a sixmile signalling failure at Luton which caused delays and cancella- tions across the network. There were also chaotic scenes further north in Harpenden, where passengers have complained of receiving an ‘unbelievably shocking service’ in recent weeks.
Passengers on Thameslink have already been forced to put up with hundreds of delays and cancellation since the botched introduction of a new timetable across the rail network on May 20.
Those relying on Thameslink and Northern in the North of England have been worst affected.
Many services have been cancelled because of a shortage of drivers – as delays by Network Rail finalising the new timetable left rail operators with too little time to train drivers to operate on new routes.
Charles Horton, the boss of Govia Thameslink Railway, which runs Thameslink as well as Southern and Great Northern, resigned over the debacle last week. Yesterday Govia’s parent Go Ahead announced he will be replaced by Patrick Verwer, who was previously boss of London Midland Trains. Network Rail, which maintains the rail infrastructure, apologised for the signalling failure. Thameslink also apologised, adding: ‘For passenger safety we closed the gates at St Albans station for short periods to manage the numbers of people on the platform. Passenger announcements explained this.’