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This Article is From Sep 08, 2010

London tube strike: Commuters struggle

London: Millions of Londoners struggled to get to work by road, rail, boat and bicycle on Tuesday as a strike by London Underground workers shut down much of the city's underground system.

Thousands of maintenance workers, drivers and station staff walked off the job on Monday evening for 24 hours in a dispute over 800 planned job cuts, mostly among station staff, that they say will hit service and safety.

Earlier, talks aimed at conciliating the unions broke down, as agreements could not be reached about job security and salaries.

More than 3.5 million people use the underground system daily.

Transport for London, which runs the London Underground, said some services were operating on 10 of the city's 11 underground lines, with 40 percent of trains running.

The Rail, Maritime and Transport Union said support for the strike was strong and only a skeleton service was operating.

There were chaotic scenes across the capital as commuters were advised to take alternative routes.

Long queues of people could be seen waiting at bus stops to board many of the capital's already crowded buses.

Thousands of people were expected to use extra boat services on the River Thames.

The strike ended on Tuesday evening, but service was not expected to be back to normal until Wednesday morning.

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