Direct Talks Sought On Underground Walkout

Tube passengers found themselves stranded for 40 minutes in a padlocked empty station at Canary Wharf during a recent 24-hour strike, it was revealed today.

The TSSA rail union called on Boris Johnson to "get a grip" on trains dumping passengers at locked stations during the walkouts as it confirmed the go ahead for the fourth 24-hour stoppage from Sunday evening.

It detailed a list of ten incidents where tube trains have stopped at closed stations and wrongly allowed passengers to wander off before the driver realised he should have kept the carriage doors shut.

The worst incident was at Canada Water during the second strike on October 4 when up to 40 passengers found themselves locked in the station for 40 minutes at 5.00pm after leaving their tube train which should not have stopped.

They eventually found a stairway that led up to the local bus garage and they managed to escape.

"The customer reporting this incident to me said that she felt very claustrophobic and scared about the whole incident," LUL’s incident reporting log recorded.

On the same day, two Chinese tourists were trapped in Arnos Grove tube station for more than half an hour after being inadvertently let out of a Piccaddilly line train. They were only released after being spotted by a passer-by.

"We are very concerned about the safety implications of passengers being left stranded at locked and unmanned stations," said union general secretary Gerry Doherty.

"We are highlighting the problem today because we do not want to see any repetition of those incidents during Monday’s walkout.

"It is high time that the Mayor got a firm grip on which stations are open and which stations are closed during the strikes.

"We have given him enough notice of these walkouts which allows him to run a limited service with passengers being told quite clearly which stations are closed and where passengers should clearly not be allowed to exit those trains.

"This dispute is about safety and we want passengers to be kept safe at all times. Instead of making wild claims that he is running half of his normal service during the strikes, Boris should actually sit down with us and negotiate a settlement which delivers a safe and workable Tube service for the future."

While the TSSA and RMT unions have been involved in three 24-hour strikes so far, the train drivers union ASLEF is not involved in the protest over the axing of 800 ticket office jobs.

Up to a third of the Tube’s 270 tube stations have been closed and locked during the walkouts.

Two days of talks at ACAS this week failed to produce a deal after bosses rejected a union offer to suspend the strikes if they in turn would delay the job cuts for 12 weeks to allow a safety review of the cutbacks to take place.

(GK)