London's bankers are being warned to stay at home during the Summer Olympics, or run the risk of having to wait up to an hour to board trains at stations like Bank, Canary Wharf and Bond Street.
In all, experts are predicting that there will be queues of at least half-an-hour to get on a train at 53 key stations, with waits of up to 30 minutes at 29 stations.
The Daily Mail reports that Transport for London has spent some £4.5m sending a team to businesses trying to persuade them to either send their staff home during the Games (which start in London on July 27th and are due to finish on 12th August), or asking that employees be allowed to work from home.
The newspaper says that it is estimated that an additional 2.4m journeys will be made on the Tube and rail networks during the games (60% up on normal), and that the busiest stations are likely to face repeated temporary closures due to overcrowding.
A rail workers union spokesperson said: 'There's no question the Tube stations are going to be overwhelmed during the Games. We have severe safety concerns which we have raised....over the potential carnage that could occur'.
And the Financial Times quotes Sir David Higgins, CEO of Network Rail, who said: 'What you need to understand is that during the Games bad things will happen. There's going to be track circuit failure, there will be overhead line breakages, there will be cable theft. Probably there will be suicides.....that's going to happen unfortunately.....But we shouldn't get excited about it, we shouldn't panic about it'. My, how reassuring.
One banker told Here Is The City: 'Travelling to work in London is extremely unpleasant at the best of times. The best thing to do during the Games is to stay at home - get your holiday requests in quick; I booked mine last year. There's no way I want to be in London during the Olympics. The trains will be like meat trucks!'.
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