Yesterday, Sunday 10 December, West Ealing, noon...
Knowing that the tiniest amount of snow disrupts London utterly, I check the TfL website to see how my journey to Luton Airport will look. As expected; "Central line - part closures, severe delays on other parts of the line. Piccadilly line - part closure, severe delays on other parts of the line." Metropolitan line - not working at all. The District line is working OK, so I set ofp to Ealing Broadway with the intention of getting to St Pancras changing at Victoria for the Victoria line. All goes well, I reach St Pancras and see the ThamesLink services have been diverted to the East Midlands platforms; in any case I board an East Midlands train to Nottingham, first stop Luton Airport Parkway, it departs on time (14:10) and arrives on time (14:30). Marvellous.
Stepping outside into the snow at Luton Airport Parkway station, I can see three airport shuttle buses standing idly and a huge crowd of people. No bus staff anywhere to be seen, no information - just disgruntled passengers with planes to catch, suitcases, buggies, small children... I walk around the buses to see some guys with snow shovels trying to clear wet snow off the approach road. I know what's going on... the buses don't have winter tyres. The approach road is steep, as is the slip-road linking the station and New Airport Way. The buses are unable to climb either hill. No snow-ploughs, no salt, no pavement clearing.
So I walk - I've done this journey many times before; it's usually 20 minutes on foot. Today, I take the footpath rather than walking alongside New Airport Way for safety's sake - half an hour sloshing through slush and muck, snow and ice. Half way to the airport terminal, I start seeing people coming down the other way, walking towards the station because the airport bus is not running from that end either. Total traffic jam on the roads. At times, I'm walking between the stationary cars rather than risk the treacherous pavements.
Finally reaching the airport, I can see the bay where the station shuttle buses usually stop. Not a shuttle bus in sight, just hundreds of people, in the cold, (some unsuitably dressed having flown home from warmer climes), with luggage and infants and zero information, waiting to get to the station.
The photo (above) shows the amount of snow - not a whole lot by Warsaw standards, yet enough to paralyse Luton. A local bus from the town centre has just arrived (centre left of pic), but it's neither come from nor will it be going to Luton Airport Parkway station. The time: 15:06.
Entering the terminal building, my jaw drops. The departures board is awash with red - cancelled flights. Those that have not been cancelled and are presumably flying were scheduled to depart at 06:30, 07:00 and still have not left. The first Warsaw flight of the day, at 08:10, is showing that the gate will be announced at 14:40 - that is, 20 minutes ago. The next Warsaw flight, 14:20, has been cancelled. My flight, at 17:30, is shown to be scheduled for 17:50 (this squares with information I had online before I left my father's). So I go through security and arrive airside to see what will happen next...
Hours pass, the departures board hardly changing. Flights are being called over the loudspeaker, the departures board seems to have got stuck. Milan, Cluj-Napoca, Lublin... people rushing to gates, somehow things are moving... We wait for further announcements. They are garbled, read out by non native-English speakers, I'm straining to hear what's going on. At one stage, all passengers for cancelled Ryanair flights are called to Gate 16 from where they will be escorted away from the airport. It's 19:30, and finally passengers for WizzAir flight W6 1308 to Warsaw are called to Gate 6.
There we meet passengers from WizzAir flight W6 1302 to Warsaw, which had been scheduled to depart eleven and half hours ago. The mood is turning ugly - the staff on the desk are provided with scant information, and that seems to be contradictory. W6 1302 will be taking off shortly, but W6 1308 is cancelled - or was that the other way round. At last passengers for my flight are told that yes, it is definitely cancelled. Leave the airport, re-book your ticket, WizzAir will reimburse for the ticket and for hotel costs. All flights from the UK for Monday and Tuesday are fully booked.
I leave the airport terminal and catch a Green Line bus to London, which leaves at 20:30, and to my surprise negotiates all the steep slip-roads and gets onto the motorway without any problem. I catch the Central line at Marble Arch ('Expect severe delays' says a board at the station entrance), but by luck there's an Ealing Broadway train on the platform as I reach it. I'm back at my father's at 22:15, and straight away I go online to book my ticket home. Monday - all flights to Poland booked. Tuesday - the same. Wednesday - there's one seat left for the evening flight to Warsaw, but by the time I've reached for my credit card - it's gone. I manage to book a seat on the early afternoon flight on Thursday 14 December. It costs £155, more than three time more than my original Luton-Warsaw ticket (£47).
This morning, British TV news is full of pictures of a snow-bound country beset by traffic chaos. At Heathrow Airport yesterday, more than 300 flights were cancelled. Ealing Gazette's Twitter feed is full of stories about traffic jams and school closures. Poland can have this or much worse weather for three-four months of the year, and schools will only close when temperatures fall below -20C. And here in Ealing, it's +1C and it's raining! Here's a sample Tweet from Ealing Gazette today: "Snow in west London: Vyners School shut amid concerns for 'safety of staff'".
There's nothing new or unexpected about snow in London in December. It seems that year after year, people responsible for keeping the infrastructure going get caught totally unprepared. Where's the training? Where's the process, the systems, the management? Why can Okęcie (or indeed any Polish or Central European airport) keep the airliners flying through the depths of winter, while a few hours of wet snow cripples British airports? Where's the crisis management? Where are the procedures for de-icing runways, taxi-ways, gates and aircrafts' wings? Where are the procedures for keeping passengers informed? This weather had been forecast - why were no steps taken to foresee what would happen and react accordingly? 'Train hard, fight easy' should be the way. Expect the unexpected and plan for it.
Climate change means more extreme weather events; I've observed warmer winters in Warsaw, but here in London heavy snowfalls are become less rare and something that planners need to plan for.
Not least the provision of snow tyres for public-service vehicles. Of course, the UK makes very little snow equipment of any kind, so it will have to be imported from EU countries (Goodyear, Michelin, Bridgestone, Dębica etc all produce winter tyres in factories in Poland).
This time last year:
Łódź Fabryczna station opens again
This time three years ago:
Pluses and minuses of PKP
This time four years ago:
When transportation breaks down
This time six years ago:
Take me back to Tulsa
This time eight years ago:
Another book launch
This time nine years ago:
Jeziorki in the 16th Century
This time ten years ago:
Rotten weather, literally
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4 comments:
My wife, who is Polish, finds it amusing how the locals here in South Carolina react to the slightest snow: everyone rushes to the store as the storm approaches and buys up all the milk and bread in sight. Schools close, sometimes for mutliple days, when there are a couple of inches on the ground. My wife, who grew up just 35km from Zakopane, just listens with a smile when her coworkers complain about such things.
@ gls
Reminds me of the Richard Pryor sketch about the white man and the black man in the jungle. Both see ahead of them on the path a snake.
White man (panicking, throwing arms in air) "SNAKE! SNAKE!"
Black man (continuing to walk in a hip manner) "...snake."
Sadly, the situation with Wizz is not unique. Whilst I tend to rely on Wizz to get between LTN and WAW, their way of cancelling flights and shepherding passengers (and leaving them to find their own way is poor.) A similar thing happened to me a couple of years ago. High winds at Luton prevented five Friday evening Wizz flights landing. They were dispersed around the UK, diverted to other airports. Flightradar24 showed where they were heading, but the staff at the gate still kept repeating the message that the flight would be in shortly, in fact it was already at Doncaster!
All 900 passengers were escorted back from airside to the public side of the airport where no-one from Wizz was available, and no customer assistance was provided - nor was a hotel room. The next available flight was Sunday morning, no use with a return on Monday morning. In the end, I booked myself a flight into Lublin (after calling the £1 a minute "helpline") and got myself into Warsaw on Saturday lunchtime.
The UK does not gear up for snow, generally because it tends to be different parts of the UK it hits each year. Up in Scotland yesterday, and it was bright sunshine, hovering just above freezing. Back down to the midlands last night, and there is thick snow on the ground, more than we have had for years. I advocate winter tyres, if you keep a vehicle for long enough, the cost is negligible.
From what I see as an engineer involved in transportation planning in the UK:
- 'Extreme weather' means flooding in the UK. Over the past few years, ability to withstand specified flood events (either keeping on operating or being capable of quick restoration of service) has become the norm for project remits. (Of course it's hard to predict where a flood will occur versus where it could occur.)
- Engineering and maintenance people are getting good at restoring service after floods, and some preventative measures (such as raising signalling equipment above predicted flood levels, track raising and watercourse enhancement around Exeter and Oxford) are quite effective.
- What gets specified for projects and operations depends upon the commissioning agency, be it the DfT, a local authority, or a third party funder. It's hard to defend not protecting against flooding in the light of several severe floods around the UK, and remits reflect this. The business case may stack up too (for example, a main line railway shut for a week or a month costs a lot of lost revenue.)
- As for snow, the Highways Agency or a bus company (etc) will only pay for protection if a funder steps forward, however.....
- Budget airlines expect to manage appreciable levels of passenger unhappiness. It's a part of their business model. The cheap fares will keep the aeroplanes full.
- As for train companies, the franchising model means that severe weather is a Network Rail (i.e. government) risk. The company (and government) being under funding pressure, snow clearance equipment is concentrated where it's most needed (i.e. Scotland). It's cheaper to compensate the TOCs than to provide seldom-used equipment.
Anyway, the British may be good at complaining, but they don't do much about it. Out walking the dog yesterday, I had to listen to a pensioner complaining to all who would listen that "they" didn't send people out to clear the footway on a quiet suburban street. But imagine the howls if rates went up to pay for more staff and equipment!
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