Transport User Voice December 2024 – Christmas engineering works 2024

28 November 2024

Check before you travel

With Christmas nearly upon us thoughts inevitably turn to the great holiday get away.  

While roadworks tend to be scaled back over the festive period the railway seizes the opportunity provided by the Christmas shutdown to undertake large engineering projects.  

Our research shows that there’s a lack of agreement amongst passengers about engineering works at Christmas. Journeys at this time of year are considered important and disruption is seen as particularly wearing. However, people do understand the practicality of doing work while fewer people are travelling. 

This year will see a major closure of the railway in the Paddington area as part of the construction of the HS2 station at Old Oak Common and this will be the first of many Christmas closures here over the coming years. 

The work means no services will call at London Paddington between Friday 27 December and Sunday 29 December 

The significant impact on passenger journeys as a result of the engineering work means that there’s a highly complex set of plans to try and minimise disruption and keep passengers moving. We’ve been inputting into the extensive cross industry preparations, drawing on the passenger research we undertook, probing the robustness of mitigation plans. 

The work at Old Oak Common isn’t the only major engineering taking place over Christmas this year. We have also been feeding into cross industry planning around works that will affect services between Bedford/Luton and London between Saturday 21 and Sunday 29 December.  

There will also be significant disruption to services in the Crewe area between Wednesday 25 December and Thursday 2 January as resignalling work takes place as well as resignalling work in the Cambridge area 27 December to 5 January and station works that will close Liverpool Street 27 December to 1 January, plus other work scheduled to take place elsewhere round the network.  

With so many major works running simultaneously on some days the industry will have to take a network-wide approach to mitigate the complex passenger impact and keep people moving. 

It’s also important that industry manages any crew shortages that might affect services over the period. Over the autumn we have been seeking assurances from operators around timetable resilience.

Throughout our work we’ve been emphasising the importance of: 

• effective multi-channel passenger information to raise awareness  

• clarity on route restrictions and alternative route to provide clear options to travellers 

• having staffing on hand on the day to help 

• well co-ordinated cross route contingency planning and dynamic management on the day. 

Do add ‘check before you travel’ to your Christmas to do list if you’re venturing onto the rail network this Christmas… 

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