The Tube is failing passengers- and strikes make it worse, writes James Hanson

I use it every day and it remains the quickest, most convenient, and most quintessential way of getting around the capital. But let’s not kid ourselves - the London Underground has seen better days. Carriages are sprawled with graffiti (the Bakerloo line being an especially bad example), fare-dodging is rife, and most alarmingly of all, the number of sexual offences on the TfL network is going up.

There is plenty of blame to go round. The Mayor’s office, Transport for London and the British Transport Police all have questions to answer. But no one is a bigger obstacle to change than the rail unions, namely ASLEF and the RMT. Time and again they have downed tools at the drop of a hat to protect the vested interests of their members. This weekend is just the latest example, when RMT workers begin a series of rolling strikes over pay and conditions.

The tactic they’re using - whereby different grades of staff walk out at different times - is designed to cause maximum pain to passengers while reducing the amount of time each staff member is on strike. The RMT boasts it will bring “significant disruption to the capital’s transport network”. I have little doubt they’re correct. If there’s one thing the RMT knows how to deliver, it’s pain and misery for ordinary Londoners.

On one level, you almost have to admire the effectiveness of RMT’s spectacularly militant leadership. How else can you explain the insanity of a tube driver earning around £68,000 a year for a job that should have been made redundant years ago. Metro systems in Paris, Dubai, Copenhagen, Singapore, Sydney, Turin, Delhi, Milan, Taipei, and (soon) Madrid are all partly or fully automated. Even in London, the Docklands Light Railway has been successfully driverless since it opened in 1987. Why on earth, almost 40 years later, has it not been replicated across the network?

Automation would also make it easier to deliver a fully round-the-clock underground system. The New York City Subway has run 24/7, 365 days a year since 1904! Is it really too much to ask that London can finally catch up more than a century later? The reason such reforms remain overdue is down to the intransigence of the rail unions, and the craven way they’ve been appeased by politicians - the pay rises Labour gave to train drivers last year being a prime example.

These latest strikes centre around the RMT’s claim that its workers are suffering from “fatigue”. Call me hard-hearted, but what exactly are TfL staff doing all day to suffer from such exhaustion? They have a contractual 35-hour working week and appear to spend most of their time standing idly by while fare-dodgers bump the barriers right in front of them. Every job has its stresses and strains, but I can’t help feeling this is just the latest cherry-picked excuse for union militancy.

The London Underground remains an engineering marvel and is rightly a source of pride for the capital. But we should no longer delude ourselves that it is the envy of the world. Subway systems in countless other cities are cleaner, safer and more efficient. For too long the rail unions have stood in the way of progress, and it is time for politicians to stand up to them. The tube should be run in the interests of passengers, not the unions.

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