As with every year, no National Rail services run in London on Christmas Day (December 25), with very few trains on Boxing Day (December 26) either. It often falls to the coach network, and taxis, to pick up the slack for anyone desperately needing to travel instead. However, this year in particular, the timing of industrial action on the railways has meant higher demand for coaches, with Victoria Coach Station regularly seeing higher passenger numbers.
Responding to the extra demand, Britain's biggest coach operator, National Express is adding 50,000 extra seats on its standard network of routes from December 18 until January 2, expecting to carry double the passengers it did last year. Fares against the railway are also highly competitive, with one-way fares from Victoria starting at £19.90 to Manchester, £15.90 to Birmingham and Bristol, and £14.90 to Leicester.
On Christmas Day itself, a special network of routes linking London with 80 different towns, cities and airports across the
UK▸ will run. John Boughton, National Express UK Coach's commercial director, said: “Christmas is such an important time of year for travel and we’re seeing huge demand for our services, particularly on and around the rail strike days."
This year, the 24 hour Oxford Tube coach route, which was recently named UK's best, will not run on Christmas Day, ending it's traditional "all day, all night, all year" tagline. Coaches between Oxford and Victoria will run until late Christmas Eve (last departure 9.40pm) and start early Boxing Day (first departure 6am) though.
Newcomer to the UK coach market FlixBus will continue to run its coaches on Christmas Day with both domestic and international destinations available, offering the cheapest alternative to Eurostar for travel to the continent as the high speed international train operator will be unable to run trains late Christmas Eve, all day Christmas Day or all day Boxing Day due to the
RMT▸ strike.
Andreas Schorling, Managing Director of FlixBus UK said: “FlixBus is giving the gift of sustainable, reliable, affordable transport, and our coaches will be running over Christmas and bank holidays, giving more people than ever the chance to meet and celebrate the season! The popularity of FlixBus has been overwhelming this year and our mission to become the largest coach provider in the UK within the next five years is well underway.”
