Bank holiday nightmare

Thousands of rail, road and air passengers face severe delays and congestion over the bank holiday. On one of the busiest weekends of the year for travel, repairs and maintenance mean queues and bottlenecks will be almost inevitable.

The chaos is likely to be worse for those attempting to attend the Notting Hill Carnival and the Reading Festival, which will both be affected by rail maintenance.

Roadworks on the M25, and the British Airways announcement that it plans to "merge" flights because of a shortage of check-in staff, will cause further headaches.

Meanwhile the RMT rail union has ordered a 24-hour strike on Saturday among customer service staff at Channel Tunnel passenger train operator Eurostar, including ticket check-in employees and baggage handlers.

London's airports will have to cope with record numbers of passengers, with crisis-hit Heathrow expected to bear the brunt. With BA staff levels 20 per cent down the carrier has asked managers to volunteer to help in Heathrow terminals in an attempt to prevent a repeat of this week's delays. A BA spokeswoman said: "We would like to reassure passengers we are doing everything we can to ensure their journeys are as smooth as possible."

Heathrow is anticipating a seven per cent rise in customers - up to 835,000 from 780,000 last year - while Stansted will experience a similar percentage increase with up to 283,000 passengers.

Severe problems are likely on the railways, with huge sections of the mainline network to be shut down. Thousands of passengers - particularly those using long-distance routes operated by Virgin Trains and First Great Western - face long delays and diversions. There will be no direct Virgin trains serving Euston throughout the holiday. Over the weekend and on Sunday 5 September, Virgin trains from the North will run only as far as Birmingham New Street.

Euston will remain open for local Silverlink services - including those to Hemel Hempstead, where longer-distance passengers can catch replacement bus services for their onward journeys.

Those heading to and from Scotland should use GNER services from King's Cross. Thameslink's through-London services will also be halted during the three-day break. There will be no First Great Western services between Paddington and Reading over all three holiday days.

Instead, passengers to and from the west - and visitors to the Reading Festival - will have to change at Reading. There they can change to South West Trains services to Waterloo.

SWT says it will run extra trains but these are likely to be very crowded. With up to 30 per cent more cars than usual predicted to take to the roads - a total of 15 million - the AA has warned drivers to set off early and allow more time than usual for their journeys.

Problems are anticipated around Heathrow owing to long-term roadworks between junctions 12 and 14 of the M25, as a record number of people attempt to use the airport over the weekend. More problems are predicted-along the M4 because of the Reading Festival.

About 55,000 music fans are due to attend each of its three days, and many of them will have to take to the roads because of the severe disruption to train services by engineering works.

The Notting Hill Carnival is also expected to cause high traffic levels on routes into west London including the A40 and A4.

AA spokesman Rebecca Rees said: "The better the weather is the more problems there are going to be - a lot of people will decide on the day what they are going to do.

"Routes to the coast and to Channel ports will be busy, as will the M5 down through the West Country.

"Anybody planning to fly from Heathrow can expect big delays on the M25 in both directions because of the roadworks, and these will also obviously hit anybody using the road to get to Gatwick or Luton airports."