Police investigate death of Daniel Enriquez on busy train on Sunday morning
An unidentified man shot and killed a passenger on a subway train in New York in what police officials said appeared to be an unprovoked attack.
The incident happened on a Q train travelling over the Manhattan Bridge at about 11.40am on Sunday, a time when the subway is often filled with families, tourists and people heading to brunch.
Continue reading...With 40,000 RMT members voting, union warns of ‘potentially biggest rail strike in modern history’
Contingency plans are being drawn up to try to keep passenger and freight trains running and prevent empty supermarket shelves after unions warned of “potentially the biggest rail strike in modern history”.
The National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) is balloting 40,000 members on the industrial action, which network sources have reportedly said would create “serious challenges” in keeping goods moving and supermarket shelves stocked.
Continue reading...Tunnelled section of £19bn project through centre of London finally ready for passengers
London’s Elizabeth line is to open on 24 May, it has been announced, with the long-delayed tunnelled central section of the £19bn Crossrail project now ready for passengers.
Transport for London (TfL) said the line would open, subject to final safety approvals, the week prior to the Queen’s jubilee celebrations.
Continue reading...RMT to ballot more than 40,000 workers at Network Rail and train firms in dispute over jobs and pay
More than 40,000 railway workers are to be balloted in a dispute over jobs and pay that a union says could result in Britain’s biggest rail strike in modern history.
The National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) said staff would be asked to vote on strike action over Network Rail’s plans to cut at least 2,500 maintenance jobs as part of a £2bn reduction in spending on the network.
Continue reading...Dozens of services to and from London cancelled, and strike action hits TransPennine Express routes
Rail passengers face a “disastrous weekend” of disruption as engineering works and strikes hamper one of the busiest Easter getaways in years.
Dozens of services to and from London have been cancelled as Network Rail carries out 530 engineering projects across the bank holiday weekend.
Continue reading...Airports report long waits because of Covid checks and staff shortages, as tourist traffic eases near Dover
Passengers faced long queues at Heathrow and Manchester airports as the Easter holidays got under way.
Travellers vented frustration on social media as Covid checks, high passenger volumes and reported staff shortages and e-gate problems meant long waits for check-in at Heathrow.
Continue reading...The official London tube map has only three stops named after women. Together with the actor Emma Watson and the author Rebecca Solnit, I’ve been working on a feminist alternative. Here’s the story behind our contribution to International Women’s Day
When I was a baby feminist, I would argue with friends that public space was political. I had been radicalised by my teenage years, sick to the back teeth of street harassment from men who seemed to think that the streets were theirs to roam freely, while women were relegated to decoration. It wasn’t a regular occurrence, but it happened enough times to enrage me. Walking home from school in London, in uniform, I had been followed, had my arm snatched and had been approached at least once by a man who displayed stalking tendencies. As I grew older, I understood these actions as displays of dominance and I was disgusted. Alongside my indignation, I was crushingly disappointed. I had been raised in this city and hated that this kind of behaviour was an impediment to my teenage desire for autonomy and freedom.
I had been navigating public transport by myself for years at that point, and it took me everywhere I wanted to go. Once I had exhausted my immediate surroundings on foot, I’d take the Piccadilly line to gigs at the now bulldozed Astoria on Charing Cross Road. I’d jump on the Hammersmith and City line, a portal to dancing all day at Notting Hill carnival. The Circle line made me feel like an intellectual in the museums of South Kensington. There was no option back then to outsource travel plans to a clever little app, so in order to go anywhere I, like everyone else, would have to study the tube map to find out how to get to my destination. If I was feeling brave, I’d sometimes jump on the tube at Turnpike Lane and work it out as I went along, peering at the mini maps inside the train carriage and looming awkwardly over whoever was sitting in the seat beneath. I didn’t need a car. The map in my pocket opened up my city.
Continue reading...Picket lines mounted outside tube stations in capital with another 24-hour strike planned for Thursday
Transport for London has encouraged people to work from home on Tuesday and Thursday as thousands of tube workers went on strike, crippling the capital’s transport network.
The Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union said its members were “solidly supporting” the industrial action with picket lines mounted outside tube stations.
Continue reading...Harassment often goes unreported, meaning metrics don’t always convey experiences – especially for women and people of color
Around 9.30am on 15 January of this year, Michelle Go was waiting for a train at Times Square subway station. Go, 40, a senior manager at Deloitte, was on her way to work. As she was checking her phone, a man shoved her from behind as a train roared into the station. She was hit by the incoming train and killed.
Go’s murder prompted shock and outrage. She was of Asian descent, at a time when anti-Asian hate crimes have been surging across New York City, including in the subways. The chief suspect in her killing, Martial Simon, has two violent felonies on his record and a warrant out for allegedly violating his parole. He reportedly had a history of severe mental illness, including schizophrenia, and had cycled between hospitals and jails over the years; the New York Times reported he was unhoused. Although police said there was no indication that Go’s death was an anti-Asian hate crime, prosecutors said they were examining “every piece of evidence to determine if defendant’s actions were motivated by racial bias”.
Continue reading...Activists say bill being presented to parliament sanctions irreversible destruction of environment
A nationwide day of action against HS2 – involving banner drops, solidarity protests and a Twitter storm – is planned for Monday as the bill to expand the line beyond Crewe is presented to parliament.
Environmental activists say the bill will “sanction immense and irreversible destruction to the environment” and want to raise awareness of HS2’s “continuing ecocide, corruption and financial mis-management”.
Continue reading...Findings surpass experts’ expectations after buildings, wells, coins and wide road discovered
A wealthy Roman trading town, whose inhabitants adorned themselves with jewellery and ate from fine pottery, has been discovered half a metre below the surface of a remote field in Northamptonshire.
A 10-metre-wide Roman road, domestic and industrial buildings, more than 300 coins and at least four wells have been unearthed at the site, where 80 archaeologists have been working for the past 12 months.
Continue reading...Volunteer passengers will be aboard central TfL section of Elizabeth line as part of final testing phase
Hopes that Crossrail will open in central London in early 2022 – this time on schedule – have been boosted as the troubled £19bn scheme moved into its final phase of testing at the weekend.
The start of months of trial operations, which will involve thousands of volunteer passengers to test how the system will function, including in emergencies, was described as a “significant milestone” by Transport for London and the mayor.
Continue reading...Okehampton welcomes revamp of service connecting Dartmoor town to Exeter and beyond
In 1972, the people of Okehampton turned out in force to wish a fond farewell to the Devon moorland town’s regular passenger rail service.
The mayor, Walter John Passmore, carried a funeral wreath and his wife, Daisy, waved the green flag to signal the final train’s departure, just about managing a sad smile for the cameras.
Continue reading...Campaigners in Devon celebrate return of passenger trains after 50 years, a first step to reversing the Beeching closures
On the rugged northern edge of Dartmoor, a small army of workers in high-vis vests is readying Okehampton station to welcome the first regular passenger train since 1972. The canopies and picket fences are being repainted in the original dark greens and warm yellows of the long-departed Southern Railway.
It’s a historic moment for local campaigners, who have been fighting for decades to reconnect the Devon town to the national network and open up this lesser-visited part of the national park. “It’s quite extraordinary – almost unbelievable,” says Tom Baxter, 68, the secretary of the Dartmoor Railway Association, watching the painting from a gleaming green bench on the platform. “I used to travel on the line when it was British Rail and I was here when it closed in the 1970s. Local railways were seen as a bit of a nuisance at the time – they wanted to get rid of them.”
Continue reading...Number of injuries not yet known but rail services are suspended in the area
Emergency services have scrambled to respond to a collision of two trains near Salisbury on Sunday night, in a critical incident that left one train carriage derailed.
About 50 firefighters from Dorset and Wiltshire, Hampshire and Isle of Wight and South Western fire and rescue services are at the scene, which is close to London Road in Salisbury, along with Wiltshire police and Network Rail.
Continue reading...Number of commuter trips made in mid-October was just 45% of pre-Covid figure, industry says
The number of train journeys made by commuters in Great Britain remains at less than half of pre-pandemic levels, figures show.
The industry body Rail Delivery Group (RDG) said in mid-October the number of railway journeys made by those going to work was just 45% of what it was before the coronavirus crisis.
Continue reading...Industrial action abandoned as trade union leaders confirmed pay talks with ScotRail have been settled
Rail strikes planned for next week’s Cop26 climate conference have been abandoned after trade union leaders confirmed negotiations on a pay rise have been settled.
The announcement was made after talks between the RMT union and transport bosses on Wednesday.
Continue reading...Charges against six protesters dropped as HS2 was not carrying out work on the site at the time
Six environmental protesters who occupied a tunnel close to Euston station in protest against the HS2 high-speed link earlier this year walked free from court after charges in connection with the occupation were dismissed by a judge.
Daniel Hooper, 48, also known as “Swampy”; Dr Larch Maxey, 49; Isla Sandford, 18; Lachlan Sandford, 20; Juliett Stevenson-Clarke, 22; and Scott Breen, 47, faced charges of aggravated trespass at Highbury Corner magistrates court in central London for their 31 days underground in January and February of this year. A separate charge against Maxey of damage to a mobile phone was also dismissed.
Continue reading...India’s tiny train has puffed up the Himalayas since 1881 but now the world heritage site is under threat
“Darjeeling ko sano rail, hirna lai abo tyari cha / Guard le shuna bhai siti bajayo” (Darjeeling’s dainty train is all set to chug off / Oh, listen to the guard blowing the whistle): generations of children in Darjeeling have grown up hearing these lines from a Nepali nursery rhyme. Serenading the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway (DHR), it depicts the close relationship between the “Queen of the Hills” and local people.
However, that relationship has become strained after the Indian government decided to hand over the running of the railway – listed by Unesco as a world heritage site – and oversight of the land adjoining the stations to a private company, threatening jobs and livelihoods.
Continue reading...The cause of the accident was not immediately clear and federal safety authorities will investigate
At least three people were killed on Saturday afternoon when an Amtrak train that runs between Seattle and Chicago derailed in north-central Montana, toppling several cars onto their sides, authorities said.
The westbound Empire Builder train derailed at about 4pm near Joplin, a town of about 200, Amtrak spokesman Jason Abrams said. The accident scene is about 150 miles north-east of Helena and about 30 miles from the border with Canada.
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