What do passengers think?
Alison Bunce commutes from Ash Vale (near Aldershot) to work in Chiswick (west London) every day. On a normal day the journey takes two hours door to door.
“The strike adds half an hour each way if I make the connections,” she tells RAIL.
“But I have to change at Woking - and Woking has only two stopping services per hour, which is a massive reduction, so each day I am not even sure I am going to get on the train.
“The passengers are caught in the middle of the arguments between the RMT and South Western. We are like pawns, because none of this is our fault.”
Passengers can claim compensation when trains run late, under the Delay Repay scheme. But this relates to the emergency strike timetable, and not to the full timetable against which passengers bought season tickets.
When Southern Railway was crippled by RMT action over changes to the role of guards, it gave season ticket holders an additional month of travel without charge. When SWR’s predecessor (South West Trains) faced three weeks of August disruption during engineering work at Waterloo, it declared “void days” when season ticket holders were not charged. SWR is not offering similar compensation.
SWR Commercial Director Peter Williams said: “Southern did that after the event. Right now, we are focused on getting as many passengers moving as possible.”
Sheridan Swallow has commuted from Basingstoke to the City for 40 years. He has a strong reason for wanting to keep a guard on every train - 31 years ago, he was involved in the Clapham rail crash, in which 35 people died and 415 were injured.
“I was on the train that was run into. There was a limit to what the guard could do, but I think he saved lives. He walked along the track stopping people from getting down onto the live rail, which they were trying to do. He was an unsung hero of the day.
“I absolutely support having a second person on the train, dealing with the safety of the people, helping disabled people and being there when something goes wrong.
“What doesn’t bother me in any way is who works the doors. I get on the Tube, where the driver does the doors, and I never give it a second thought. I think what the guards are doing with this strike is absolutely disgraceful. I don’t understand why a handful of people are holding us to ransom when no jobs are under threat and no one is being paid less or doing more.
“They are disrupting the lives of huge numbers of people and causing them real distress and hardship. We are supposed to be working for a greener world, and what they are doing is pushing passengers out onto the roads.”