Snow on the Underground

There has been much negative comment about the ability of the UK’s Transport System to cope with the current weather conditions which have left the UK covered in snow for over two weeks. Comparisons have been drawn with previous spells of bad weather in February 2009 and 2007 (http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2009/02/fair-weather-britain.html ) and in 2003. Then Britain ground to a halt as the transport systems lack of operational competence and depth was once again cruelly exposed. However, one considerable difference this year has been how London Underground has held its own with a very creditable performance in keeping the Lines and Stations open and keeping London moving. This has been all the more crucial as road and, to a large extent, suburban rail transport became implausible.

Fresh snowfall crippled transport networks today bringing travel misery to tens of thousands of Londoners. As airports closed, hundreds of trains were cancelled or delayed and roads were deemed hazardous, commuters demanded to know why the Met Office failed to forecast the conditions. At least four centimetres of snow blanketed the capital overnight, and up to three more centimetres are expected by the end of the day.


Bakerloo Line depot at Stonebridge Park

Of the rail operators, Southeastern was worst hit, using shorter trains as some staff were unable to reach work. The Hastings to London line suffered long delays because of icy tracks and many smaller lines failed to operate. Southern, which includes the Brighton line, said all routes to and from the capital were affected. There were delays on South West Trains services through Woking in Surrey, and some trains between London and Woking, Basingstoke and Guildford were axed. All First Capital Connect Thameslink services between Brighton and London Bridge were suspended as were those on the Wimbledon Loop.


Piccadilly Line

I have some personal knowledge of the difference because my normal commute is on the Chiltern Line (a subsidiary of German State Railways!) which uses London Underground’s most weather exposed section of track, the Metropolitan Line between Amersham and Rickmansworth through the Chiltern Hills and onto Harrow on the Hill. This is the furthest the Underground gets at 43 km from central London and is the highest point at 490 feet above sea level. This morning and all during the bad weather the performance has been impressive with trains doing their best to be on time, staff opening stations and clearing and salting platforms even when the snow was falling at 7.30 am. Behind the scenes much was being done with traction current kept on overnight to stop conductor rails freezing, point heaters being checked to ensure there were no frozen points and special de-icing trains being run through the night and during service hours. The contrast with other transport modes and indeed with cars crawling at 5 miles per hour on adjoining roads has been dramatic. This resilience in the face of bad weather has not been an accident but has been the subject of much planning and hard work and determination. Indeed the biggest difference has been the attitude and determination not to roll over in bad weather.


District Line

There has been in the past an assumption that bad weather would stop the show but on Chiltern and the Underground there has been the opposite assumption, that they will stay open and run the service. And indeed this is half the battle for once you suspend a service the railway, platforms, tracks freeze up and get covered in snow. At the risk of stating the obvious half the secret of keeping a railway open is to keep it open! Don’t take my word for it, here is a passenger comment from today’s London Evening Standard which shows that the determined efforts by London Underground staff have not gone unnoticed by the most important person, the customer;

“A BIG thanks to all the London Underground Tube staff who have been out in all weathers all through the night to make sure that the rails, points, signals and trains are kept in working condition throughout this cold weather, providing a near normal service when other operators haven't. It seems that the ES only has bad things to say about the Tube, but misses out on the good things.”

London Snow

Stoke Mandeville Station

The only "News" in England is the country (but mainly London) has ground to a halt due to - shock, horror - snowfalls in winter!

Boris Johnson said: "I think we've done pretty well in what are absolutely extraordinary circumstances. There's no doubt about it, this is the right kind of snow, it's just the wrong kind of quantities. My message to the heavens is: 'You've put on a fantastic display of snow power but that is probably quite enough'." – Good Ol’ Boris, a First Rate Mind as they say in Oxford!

THE LAND now known as St James’s Park was acquired by King Henry VIII in 1532 as a game park for hunting, but has evolved over 4 centuries of Royal patronage into an elegant open space spanning 23 hectares (58 acres) with a lake harbouring ducks, geese and pelicans - the latter introduced by a Russian Ambassador in 1664.
With its royal, political and literary associations, St James’s Park is considered by many to be the most impressive of all the Royal Parks in London, yet the landscape remains largely unchanged to that which was designed by the architect John Nash in the 1820s.


Buckingham Palace


Frozen Lake with Buckingham Palace in the background


London Eye

The Park is central to some of London’s most important monuments including Buckingham Palace, Horseguard’s Parade, the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey which is but a short walk away. The Palace of St James, built in the 1530s, and still used as a Royal Residence also borders the park on the western side.




Duck Island


Mr & Mrs Pelican

Old Queen Street and adjacent Queen Anne’s Gate are set in the Birdcage Walk Conservation Area and contain some of London’s most striking William and Mary, Queen Anne and Georgian architecture. Past residents include peers, industrialists and philosophers, amongst whom are Lords Colchester, Guernsey, Dartmouth and Derby: Lords Grey, North and Palmerston (19th C. Prime Ministers): painters Joshua Reynolds and Jonathan Richardson: industrialists and the engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel.


Queen Anne’s Gate

“To stumble upon this most exquisite of streets...is one of London’s best architectural surprises...also about the only place where you will see London houses of the 18th century in near-mint condition.”






London Snow

by Robert Bridges

When men were all asleep the snow came flying,
In large white flakes falling on the city brown,
Stealthily and perpetually settling and loosely lying,
Hushing the latest traffic of the drowsy town;
Deadening, muffling, stifling its murmurs failing;
Lazily and incessantly floating down and down:
Silently sifting and veiling road, roof and railing;
Hiding difference, making unevenness even,
Into angles and crevices softly drifting and sailing.
All night it fell, and when full inches seven
It lay in the depth of its uncompacted lightness,
The clouds blew off from a high and frosty heaven;
And all woke earlier for the unaccustomed brightness
Of the winter dawning, the strange unheavenly glare:
The eye marvelled - marvelled at the dazzling whiteness;





The ear hearkened to the stillness of the solemn air;
No sound of wheel rumbling nor of foot falling,
And the busy morning cries came thin and spare.
Then boys I heard, as they went to school, calling,
They gathered up the crystal manna to freeze
Their tongues with tasting, their hands with snowballing;
Or rioted in a drift, plunging up to the knees;
Or peering up from under the white-mossed wonder!'
'O look at the trees!' they cried, 'O look at the trees!'
With lessened load a few carts creak and blunder,
Following along the white deserted way,
A country company long dispersed asunder:



When now already the sun, in pale display
Standing by Paul's high dome, spread forth below
His sparkling beams, and awoke the stir of the day.
For now doors open, and war is waged with the snow;
And trains of sombre men, past tale of number,
Tread long brown paths, as toward their toil they go:
But even for them awhile no cares encumber
Their minds diverted; the daily word is unspoken,
The daily thoughts of labour and sorrow slumber
At the sight of the beauty that greets them, for the charm they have broken.

Fair Weather Britain

Britain ground to a halt this morning as the transport systems lack of operational competence and depth was once again cruelly exposed. Speaking at a press conference in Downing Street, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said: "We are doing everything in our power to ensure services, road, rail and airports are open as quickly as possible, and we are continuing to monitor this throughout the day." No doubt these words will ring as true as his meaningless “British Jobs for British workers” boast. The Highways Agency said the organisation was well prepared to deal with snowfall over roads after criticism over its reaction to severe weather in 2003 but for the long suffering commuters this morning there was no sign that lessons have been learnt and all these organisations which insist on fining commuters in cash if they don’t have the correct fare were not offering them cash refunds for this transport disaster.

LONDON was overwhelmed by six inches of snow today with the threat of at least as much again to come in the next 24 hours. Forecasters warned that the big freeze could last until the weekend. Every bus was withdrawn from service for the first time in living memory because of fears for passenger safety - not even the Blitz stopped the capital's buses running.


Snow in Chiswick

All but two Tube lines were either totally or partially suspended. Many mainline trains in and out of the capital were cancelled with Southeastern and Southern services completely shut. Roads were either impassable or treacherous after the heaviest London snowfall in 18 years.

Dozens of motorists on the M25 gave up trying to drive in treacherous conditions and stayed in their cars on the hard shoulder. The AA warned motorists they risked hypothermia if their cars broke down. Both runways at Heathrow airport were closed and passengers were advised to check with their airline before leaving for the airport.


Snow White City

A spokesman for the worst World Class airport operator BAA (http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2008/04/up-up-and-away-with-baa-no-2.html)said while Gatwick was open, there were significant delays and cancellations. Stansted, London City and Luton airports were shut. Hundreds of thousands of commuters were forced to stay at home, hitting businesses already suffering from the credit crunch. Most schools were shut.

Network Rail said it had been unable to cope with the sheer volume of snow. An NR spokesman said: "We knew the snow was coming. We had teams of track workers at key junctions. We had people out all night clearing the tracks but the snow was so heavy that once the tracks had been cleared the conductor rails were covered with snow and ice again."


Epsom Downs Station

Many of London's best known sights were blanketed, affording spectacular views of Parliament and other landmarks. Up to six inches of snow fell in London overnight with the same again expected over the next 24 hours. The snow, brought in on winds from Siberia, is the heaviest since 1991 when six inches fell in London and 20 inches in Yorkshire.

While the whole of the UK was affected, London and the South-East bore the brunt. The standstill angered workers who asked why London was unable to cope with conditions that had been predicted several days ago. "London looks beautiful but I'm really angry the transport system has collapsed," said Michael Topper, 24, as he walked from his home in Kensington to offices in Soho. "They've known about the snow since yesterday. The later I get into work the more money we will lose and it's a really worrying time."

Transport for London announced on its website that all London buses, which carry five million passengers a day, had been "withdrawn from service due to adverse weather and dangerous road conditions". The Highways Agency said 500 Lorries had worked through the night spreading grit. A spokesman said: "Our real problem is HGVs which skid, jack-knife and block the roads which mean our gritting Lorries can't get through." The National Rail Enquiries phone line crashed at 7.30am - normally the height of the rush-hour - because so many people were trying to get through.
David Brown of Transport for London said the situation was "exceptional". He added: "We haven't had a circumstance like this for over two decades. We were prepared in the sense that all our cold weather plans on the underground were put into place. But I think that actually the volume of the snow falling during the middle of the night was very difficult for us."


Barons Court Tube Station

At midday the Mayor of London Boris Johnson announced the £8.00 Central London Congestion charge was being suspended for the day – an empty gesture for the empty streets. ( http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2008/08/london-congestion-charge.html) Disruption caused by the heavy snowfall could cost UK businesses about £1bn, business groups have estimated. The Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) said that 20% of the UK's working population, or 6.4 million

Trading on the London Stock Exchange was thinner than normal. Stephen Alambritis from the FSB said its estimate of £1.2bn was a cautious one and the actual cost was likely to be higher. "There is also the knock-on effect of passing trade going down as people won't be buying their sandwiches for lunch or picking up a coffee or newspaper," he said.


Alfresco at Canary Wharf

Questions have been asked about whether authorities were sufficiently prepared for the snowfall, given that it was widely forecast. The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, admitted that the capital was not equipped to deal with such an unusually heavy snow fall. "This is the kind of snow we haven't seen in London in decades. We don't have the snow-ploughs that we would otherwise need to be sure of getting the roads free," he said. But Mr Johnson said it did not necessarily make sense to make a major investment in snow-ploughs if they were only used once every two decades.

This may be so but taking today’s almost total wipe out of transport systems serious questions need to be asked about how the lack of resilience is hitting the economic viability of Britain and how London can claim to be a World Class City if it and its economy grinds to a halt under six inches of strange fluffy stuff? Has the limits of outsourced Britain been ( http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2007/10/outsourcing-or-ouch-sourcing.html ) discovered as the superficial consequences of the outsourcing, franchising and the tendency to concentrate on short term solutions at the expense of longer term and more robust responses to problems? Is this a country powered by an economy and transport system which only works in fair weather? Is this Fair Weather Britain?