Travel chaos predicted for bank holiday weekend
A weekend of road and rail chaos is being predicted for this bank holiday as railways across the country are being closed for repairs.
Network Rail is using the holiday weekend to carry out a series of substantial engineering works and major roadworks are also in place on some of the biggest motorways.
Rail lines affected include the Great Western, East Coast and West Coast mainlines and the Stansted Express, while serious delays are expected on the M4, M11 and M25 due to roadworks. Road routes to the coast are also expected to be busy with sunny weather forecast for Sunday and Monday.
Many large events taking place over the bank holiday are expected to be affected, as well as passengers trying to get to major airports to leave the country. Both the Reading and Leeds rock festivals begin today, the Notting Hill Carnival takes place this weekend, there is a large street festival in Liverpool and Wales are playing England in Cardiff on Saturday.
For those heading to Reading today there is a reduced train service from Paddington until 11pm after which all trains have been cancelled until 5am on Tuesday. However extra train have been scheduled from Waterloo.
Reading will also become the temporary starting point for train journeys to the West Country and South Wales, with a bus service then operating into London.
In addition Network Rail have announced that the West Coast mainline will be shut for eight days from tomorrow between Hemel Hempstead and Milton Keynes while the track is upgraded to take tilting trains.
Over 1.8 million people are expected to be flying out of the country, with 800,000 travellers expected at Heathrow and 480,000 at Gatwick.
