SINCE 2000 London has seen around 40 strikes on the Underground. The chaos which accompanies them are a short-term drag on the capital’s economy. The Federation of Small Businesses, an industry body, estimated that the one-day strike in July cost London £300m ($462m). But a new paper, by researchers at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, points to the long-term benefits of tube strikes.
The focus of the paper is Londoners’ commuting patterns, before and after industrial action takes place. It looks at a two-day strike in February 2014, which the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers called in response to plans to close ticket offices and make voluntary redundancies. In that strike, some union members continued to work: the effect was that 171 out of 270 tube stations closed for the day. Some commuters were not much affected by the strike, while others were less lucky.
The authors compare the behaviour of those hit by the strike to those that were not. To do so, they gather anonymised data from Oyster cards, the payment gizmos that Londoners use to enter and leave the tube. They end up with data on about 18,000 Londoners over a 20-day period who...Continue reading
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