It's looking very likely that a four-day tube strike will start on Monday, with disruption rippling into Sunday and Friday morning. The DLR is also pencilled in for two days of concurrent disruption.
Sunday on the tube is "limited services running, complete your journey by 6pm"
Monday-Thursday on the tube is "little to no service running"
Friday on the tube is "no service before 8am, normal by late morning"
These strikes normally get cancelled.
But if this doesn't, it's going to be pretty bad.
Last time this nearly happened, in July 2023, I wrote a post about the worst places to live during a tube strike. If your local tube station closes, who has furthest to go to find an alternative train?
Specifically I asked "which tube stations are furthest away from a non-tube station?" And I made this map.
grey is 'over 1 mile from a non-tube station', yellow over 1½, orange over 2, red over 2½, purple over 4
Only one tube station in zone 1 is more than a mile from a non-tube station and that's South Kensington (1.1 miles from Victoria). In zone 2 there are three - North Greenwich (1.3 miles from Westcombe Park), Stamford Brook (1.2 miles from South Acton) and Ravenscourt Park (1.1 miles from Shepherd's Bush). Zone 3 has nine such stations - Park Royal and Hanger Lane to the west, Neasden, Dollis Hill, Golders Green, Brent Cross, Highgate and East Finchley to the north, and Upton Park to the east. Of these East Finchley is by far the remotest, being 2.1 miles from Alexandra Palace.
Heading further out, twelve tube stations are over 2 miles from a non-tube station:
By far the worst place to be during a tube strike is the eastern end of the Central line. No railways compete with the tube in the slice of Outer London between the Weaver line and Crossrail, the Central line having swallowed up the only railway that ever did. Six tube stations here find themselves more than 2½ miles from a rail station, although of these only Hainault is in London and the other five are in Essex. And the really bad places to be are Theydon Bois and Epping because TfL don't run any buses here, only trains, so with only an Oyster card you're completely cut off.
If the DLR isn't running either, then 11 stations are suddenly over a mile from a non-tube/DLR station.
• Devons Road, Bow Church, Bow Road (bugger)
• Mudchute, Island Gardens
• City Airport, King George V, Beckton Park, Cyprus, Gallions Reach, Beckton
Crossrail and the Overground are going to be doing a lot of heavy lifting over the next week, assuming these strikes go ahead, which alas it seems they will.
