Students stressed by prospect of Tube strikes
How do transport strikes affect students’ lives in London?
London is known for having one of the busiest public transport systems in the world. Transport for London (TfL) services handle over 4 million daily journeys on the Tube and roughly 4.7 million on buses, with total daily trips across all modes estimated at 26.1 million in 2025.
The Elizabeth Line is officially the busiest railway service in the UK, having surpassed 500 million passenger journeys since its 2022 opening.
TfL services are the lifeblood of the city’s economy and vital for commuters, including students.
As the statistics shows 46%-78% of young Londoners (aged 16-24) use public transport regularly, and while students are being 25% of the passengers who uses TfL, strikes have a huge impact on their daily lives.
“I have work and study at the same and it’s quite stressful to think how I will get to work”
When Tube, bus, or rail services are disrupted, students often struggle to get to classes on time, or even at all. Some may face very long alternative routes, while others might miss lessons, lectures, or exams entirely.
Online classes might be an option to avoid missing lectures or lessons, but the pandemic showed the experience is not the same.
Suhani, a student at UAL, shared her experience about the latest strike which happenied in September 2025 – a time when students were coming back from the summer holidays.
Suhani said: “It was stressful. I just came back from my home country (India) and was looking forward to seeing my friends and teachers back, but suddenly TFL announced strikes, and everything seemed to not move anywhere.”
Suhani missed two seminars, and one lecture all in total just during one week of the strikes; “I remember it was a Monday when I had my first lecture, but I missed it due to the strikes, I wasn’t able to pay for an Uber, as I live 50 minutes away from the university and it would have costed me huge amounts of money.”
During transport strikes, some students are offered online lectures, but Suhani said: “I don’t want to sit at my home and look at the screen for 3 hours, while I could just go to university and meet my friends in person.”
With the upcoming series of Tube strikes taking place from March 26th, Suhani added: “I have work and study at the same and it’s quite stressful to think how I will get to work, maybe I need to leave my house three hours before lectures?”