London: By foot, bike and devious new routes, London commuters on Monday scrambled to get to work during a one-day strike by the city`s subway workers.
At least it wasn`t raining very hard.
Thousands of maintenance workers, drivers and station employees walked off the job last evening for 24 hours to protest 800 planned job cuts, mostly among station staff. It was the second such disruption since September.
Transport for London, which runs the Underground, known as the Tube, says there will be no compulsory layoffs. More than 3.5 million people use the Tube daily.
Officials claimed that they were able to run 30 percent of normal services, although some lines were shut down and some stations were closed.
Commuters who normally commute by the Tube coped by switching to buses, bikes or just walking; or some found their way to work by improvising new routes on trains and other transport. The weather helped, as heavy weekend rains gave way to drizzle this morning.
But many of central London`s narrow roads struggled to cope with the increased demand, and traffic all but came to a standstill in the central business district this morning.
PTI
