LONDON, Jan. 9 (Xinhua) -- Workers, kids heading to school and thousands of tourists were hit Monday when London Underground was brought to a virtual shutdown by a 24-hour strike.
Although the stoppage over job losses and ticket-office closures started Sunday night, the full impact came during the Monday morning commute.
Local media in London described one of the capital's busiest station stations, Victoria, as a scene of organised chaos.
Long queues blocked bus lanes and traffic police were needed to organise the crowds. Other stations, including Clapham Junction had to be evacuated because of overcrowding.
It was also bumper-to-bumber traffic on all major road routes into London as people resorted to cars to attempt the journey to work.
Even with an extra 150 buses on duty, there were long queues at bus stops, with many people deciding to make their journeys on foot.
One of the extra buses, one of the famous vintage Routemasters, took a wrong turn. One of the passengers volunteers to guide the bus driver on the Number Two route to get the bus back to its route.
London mayor Sadiq Khan has described the stoppage as pointless and said the dispute has nothing to do with the millions of Londoners being hit. He said it is affecting commuters as well as tourists in Britain's capital.
Transport for London said it was running a limited service on the District, Circle and Hammersmith and City lines, although trains would not stop at all stations
In a war of words, the RMT, the trade union representing most of the 4,000 staff who have walked out accused TfL of "peddling dangerous lies about level of tube services operating during strike".
General Secretary Mick Cash said: "It does no one any favors for TFL to openly lie about how many Tube services are running. It just piles more people into stations that are already dangerously over crowded and ramps up the risk of a major crushing incident."
RMT regional organiser John Leach, on local radio in London, defended the strike action saying the union would liked to have avoided the strike. He said the staff on strike are people who manage crowd control within stations and monitor CCTV.
Leach said the unions gave TfL the maximum period of time to resolve the dispute under strike legislation but an agreement to resolve the dispute had not been achieved.
The London Evening Standard said the tube strike was expected to cripple London's entire transport system.
The strike is due to end 18.00 hours local time Monday, but many services will not be back to normal until Tuesday.
For hundreds of thousands of London commuters there is more misery on the way. In a separate dispute over driver-operated doors on trains, another strike by staff at Southern Railway is due to start Tuesday morning.
