A new Facebook page has popped up angling for free travel on the Underground and Overground through the whole of January. Why? So that those who run the services can do more than just pay lip service when they tell us how sorry they are for the inconvenience caused by the frequent strikes.

From the page:

Sick of constant weekend closures, strikes, delays, Bob Crow, TFL, engineering work, meaningless apologies and upgrade or improvement works that don’t upgrade or improve anything?

Then sign up here. In return for the constant inconvenience they keep apologising for we passengers want free service on the tube and overground networks for the whole of January!

I briefly clicked the Like button on it, but then I had a think and I’ve unclicked it.

A month of free travel would be lovely, but I don’t see what difference it will make or how it will do any good. London Underground could only stop the strikes if it did what the unions wanted, and that’s not always possible.

Neither is London Underground necessarily to blame for overrunning engineering works which by definition require weekend closures.

While I’ll keep an eye on it, from a professional standpoint, I’m going to sit on the side where this campaign is concerned. If you want to check it out, you’ll find the page here.

It looks like a regular map, doesn’t it.

Whether or not the strikers achieve their goals today remains to be seen, but the unions are already warning that 2011 is likely to see us suffer several more strikes.

Sky News is reporting quotes from union boss Bob Crow, who said:

We are moving towards an escalation of the action… come 2011 we will have to consider escalating strikes to more than one day.

Why? Because London Underground wants to reduce its headcount by 800 because more and more of us are using Oyster cards to touch into and out of the network, which naturally need fewer ticket office staff to administer.

I can’t really see the problem. As the BBC reports, London Underground has stated that there will be no compulsory redundancies and staff will be redeployed.

So, unless it gets sorted (and I don’t see how it can, as with ticket office sales declining year on year as more and more of us top up online or by phone) today’s disruption could well be a taste of things to come.

Why? Well it seems to come down to the fact that as a commuter you can use a whole host of different trains, so if your regular service is cancelled you can jump on the next one. Not so with anyone who has bought a one-off ticket for a particular service. Their chances of a refund are much better.

As the Telegraph reports:

National Express East Anglia, whose services into Liverpool Street are expected to be hit particularly badly, said the company would provide the ‘the best possible alternative timetable’ should a strike take place.

‘Where alternative services are not available, customers including season-ticket holders, will be eligible to apply for a refund for the days affected.’

The spokesman declined to say what was meant by the ‘best possible timetable’ or what would happen to commuters for whom this timetable was unsuitable.

Read the full story here.

UPDATE: Love Money suggests that if you’re having trouble getting a refund and you paid by credit card, you should approach your card provider. It says:

If you have problems getting a refund from your train operator, and have paid for a ticket costing £100+ by credit card , then Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act may apply. This legal right doesn’t apply to debit cards, although some Visa debit cards do offer similar ‘charge back’ cover.

Read Love Money’s full article on your rights with respect to the rail and British Airways strikes here.

Who is striking, and when?

The maintenance workers’ strikes run from 6am on Tuesday 6 April to 11.59pm on Friday 9 April. The signal workers’ strikes run on the same days from 6am until 10am and from 6pm until 10pm. Clearly they are timed to cause maximum disruption to commuters, who travel at the busiest times of the day.

Why are they striking?

Network Rail has asked around 50 signal workers (out of a workforce of 6000) to move to new signalling centres and switch to a four day a week roster.

With regard to the maintenance workers, Network Rail states that it wants to make 1300 job cuts. So far 1100 people have volunteered for redundancy.

Who voted to strike?

Of the 6000 signal workers, 1705 voted in favour of a strike.

Of 18,000 maintenance workers, 6055 voted in favour of a strike.

What do the unions have to say?

RMT, which represents the maintenance workers, stated:

RMT members… could either sit back and wait for these cash-led maintenance cuts to lead to another major disaster on Britain’s railways or they could vote to take action to stop the attack on rail safety. They have overwhelmingly voted to take action.

“Nobody should be under any illusions about just how determined RMT members are to win this dispute and to stop this reckless gamble with rail safety. Nearly 150 MP’s have signed the Early Day Motion opposing Network Rail’s cuts plans and have urged the Government to intervene to call a halt to this jobs carnage on the tracks. We are reissuing that call today.

“RMT is in no doubt that the cuts programme drawn up by Network Rail would drag us back to the dark days of Railtrack and would make another Hatfield, Potters Bar of Grayrigg disaster an inevitability. That is what this dispute is all about and even the Office of Rail Regulation (ORR) has had to concede that the botched attempt to bulldoze through these cuts has raised serious safety concerns.

The TSSA represents the signal workers. Its General Secretary, Gerry Doherty, stated: “This is all about safety, the safety of the travelling public and the safety and security of our members at Network Rail. The Office of Rail Regulation agrees with us that these changes pose a threat to safety. It is time that [Network Rail chief exec] Iain Coucher started listening to his staff and the rail regulator.’

How does Network Rail respond?

Network Rail claims that the maintenance workers strike is about:

changing working practices (we need more people rostered on at night and weekends because the railways are too busy nowadays to do much maintenance work during the day). What it’s NOT ABOUT is safety – the railway is the safest it has ever been (welcome to check with Rail Safety and Standards Board) and we’d do nothing to jeopardise that.

With regard to the signal workers, Network Rail claims that ‘small local issues [have been] escalated to a national level purely for political purposes’. It points out that of the average wage of the 50 affected workers is £48,113, and that the highest-paid receives £65,616.

What is the likely effect?

Network Rail claims that the effects of the maintenance workers’ strike will be minimal. ‘The network can operate for about a week with this workforce on strike as we have enough contingency staff to cover important safety work and to respond to incidents and kit breaking down.’

The last four-day maintenance workers’ strike was two years ago, and saw no cancelled trains, no safety incidents, and 92% of trains running on time.

The impact of the signal workers’ strike is likely to be more hard-felt. As few as 20% of trains may run, and some lines may see no trains at all.

First up, delays on all lines running into Liverpool Street, including the Stansted Express and trains from Cambridge and East Anglia. Not National Express‘ fault, but whoever was managing the Christmas works for Network Rail.

Disappointing, yes. Unexpected? Not entirely.

There is a tedious inevitability to over-running engineering works, and so reports of hour-long delays on all lines running into London Liverpool Street didn’t come as a shock. This is the third year in a row that the return to work following the Christmas break has been troubled.

Network Rail was fined £14m by the regulator for over-running works affecting the return to work in January 2008.

Strikes on Virgin West Coast

Virgin West Coast passengers, meanwhile – and particularly those who have held off on renewing their season ticket until the first working day of the year (never a good move) – have been affected by a one-day strike by TSSA against the closure of ticket office windows in favour of increased use of automatic ticket machines.

You have to sympathise with their sentiments, even if you don’t agree with their actions. Strikes are rarely welcome, and timing them for the first day back at work isn’t a good way to get commuters on your side.

However, the fact remains that automatic ticket machines can’t offer help and advice and can only follow a set script rather than hunting down low fares on your behalf.

Ticket office windows are a vital resource, but claims by TSSA union leader Gerry Doherty that ‘this is all about defending a vital service to rail passengers’ have a hollow ring when the strike is clearly timed to cause the maximum disruption to those self-same commuters.

If you could work from home then it was a bonus: the opportunity to get more done by binning the commute and working in a more conducive environment.

I fell into the latter group, so I was actually quite disappointed when they reached an agreement and the last three days of strikes got canned. I think what did it, ultimately, was the threat of a week-long strike if it didn’t get settled, which finally tipped the train company over the edge and got them to agree.

They were already offering an above inflation rise, but it sounds from reading various blogs like there were underlying factors and it wasn’t just down to pay.

So we’re back to five-day weeks. From a work standpoint, that’s fine. From a travelling standpoint it’s not much fun.

Bad thing: lots of inconvenience for lots of people who have no choice but to struggle into work.

Good thing: two days of working at home for half of MacUser, which from my point of view has turned out to be massively productive. I’ve got far more done than I know I would have done in the office, as there have been no interruptions and no travelling time.

Oh, how I wish it could be like this every day.