Sunday is a day for rest. Well, it used to be. Now it’s more a day for being worried/annoyed about the upcoming week at work, and maybe spending some time with friends and family if you are in the mood. In the present age, society continues to operate on Sundays; shops and cafes are usually open, and, supposedly, public transport can still get you around.
As you are probably aware, it doesn’t exactly always work that way. For passengers of Great Western Railway (GWR) especially, Sunday travel has been particularly tricky for some time now, with nearly 50 percent of long distance Sunday trains between the west and London being cancelled or severely delayed. But why are GWR trains so delayed on Sundays at the moment?
According to the company, it’s a mix of understaffing issues and recent storms which ‘put additional pressure’ on services and infrastructure. The main issue, however, is a problem which is nationwide and affects every train provider.
Why are trains in the UK often delayed on Sundays?
In short, there are technically no drivers hired to work the weekends. To be more specific, Sundays are not included in a train drivers’ work week, but are offered as overtime to those who want them.
Historically this hasn’t caused an issue, but recently far fewer drivers have been opting to come in on their days off, leaving trains driverless and stranded. On top of this, recent pay rises mean that staff are no longer dependent on working overtime, so have less incentive to work on rest days.
Unions argue that Sundays should be added to the working week, which they say would solve this issue. Mark Whelan, general secretary of ASLEF, the train drivers’ union, told the Independent that ‘train companies don’t employ enough drivers to deliver the service they promise passengers and government, they will run.
‘The railway should not be run on overtime – which is, of course, voluntary.’
Another representative for the union added in conversation with the BBC that: ‘It's frustrating at the moment, because management just don't seem interested in running the service.’
Why are Great Western Railway services so bad on Sundays right now?
In the case of GWR, which has had a particularly bad run of Sundays in the past month, it isn’t just staffing issues. Recent weather, including storm Darragh, meant that urgent engineering works had to be done on many of their lines, naturally disrupting services. Dan Panes, a representative from the provider, said that it is ‘really sorry for anyone that's been caught up with the challenges that we're seeing on Sundays’, but added that the issues were largely ‘out of our control’.
Panes also said that these issues will ‘take some time to fix’ but that the company is ‘working on it’.
For the time being, GWR has advised anyone who can avoid travelling on Sundays to do so, especially as we head into Christmas and New Year’s. This is far from ideal, but it does leave you with a couple of days to try and make alternative arrangements. It may be time to make friends with your local coach station.
Sundays are also about to be a bad time to travel on Avanti West Coast services, as from mid-January train managers are walking out weekly. More information is available on those walk-outs here.
Train travel with Time Out
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