Travellers Hit By Strikes And Driver Shortages

Travellers have been facing long delays following a driver shortage that led to the cancellation of an entire rail route into London’s Kings Cross station.

The Great Northern service, ran by First Capital Connect (FCC), confirmed that not enough staff had agreed to work overtime.

FCC said it was offering free parking and running bus replacement services to ease travel, with union leaders denying that they had orchestrated an unofficial strike.

FCC is the second company in 2010 to be hit by a train driver shortage, with rail union Aslef currently in pay talks with their employer and already has rejected two offers.

The union said that the company had been running the weekend service recently on what has been described as a lot of goodwill.

First Capital Connect requires about 80 drivers to run the Great Northern service from Peterborough and King’s Lynn

In other public transport news, tens of thousands of bus passengers faced travel chaos yesterday as staff walked off the job for 24 hours over pay, with the stoppage affecting 58 routes and 750 buses which serve huge sections of east London.  Company bosses have imposed a pay freeze, blaming the recession, while union Unite has refused to rule out further strikes.

The East London Bus Group employees about 2,600 workers, which 2,400 are Unite members.