Fury over snow problems

Road, rail and Tube chiefs are today struggling to explain how only two inches of snow plunged London and the South-East into chaos.

Trains in the wrong places, bad driving and even fast-falling snow were all used to explain why commuters faced nightmare journeys home last night - and a repeat for the journey to work this morning.

But drivers were also blamed. Many routes were at "breaking point" because so many people left work at the same time.

"The authorities did all they could," said Rebecca Rees of the AA. "They learned their lesson after last year's debacle. The problem this time was that as soon as they saw the snow come down everyone dashed for their cars to get home at the same time. Motorists should try to stagger their journeys."

The volume of snow was also a problem. "The grit was down but the snow came in such a sudden onslaught it washed much of it away," said Ms Rees. "The slush then froze which is why there were treacherous conditions."

Successful gritting relies on timing - and the authorities got it right, she said. "Everyone saw the gritters out at the right time; not too early and not too late. But the sheer weight of snow meant it could never have been totally effective."

The RAC Foundation also said the Highways Agency did a good job on main roads and motorways. Edmund King, the foundation's executive director added: "Drivers have an awful lot to learn about how to drive in snow. Some were driving far too close to each other in conditions that made it difficult to stop and possible to slide backwards."

Last night's snow came between 5pm and 7pm and journeys that would normally take 30 minutes took hours. Conditions are also expected to be difficult tonight as roads freeze. London's passenger watchdog today attacked Tube and rail chiefs over their failures to cope with the freeze.

Anthony Singer, spokesman for the London Transport Users Committee, said there were problems on seven Tube lines at the peak of the morning rush and severe delays on railways. "Despite having a full week's notice of the weather, preparations were simply not good enough," he said.

This was met with a staunch rebuttal from both Tube and mainline operators. A spokeswoman for London Underground said: "We had trains operating all night spraying icing fluid onto the main lines - and those routes worked well. Where we had problems was because of trains iced up in depots."

Special de-icing trains could not get into the depots because they were already full with other stock. "We had staff on standby physically to scrape the tracks and this was done as quickly as possible this morning," she said.

Delays on the Piccadilly line were caused by a track fire and a signal fault.

A spokeswoman for Network Rail, responsible for the mainline infrastructure, said: "We had the maximum number of de-icing trains - about 100 - running all day and all night. We also had ghost trains - empty stock - running during the night to help prevent tracks from freezing."

She said "several thousand" staff were diverted from routine duties to help clear tracks. In many cases, particularly in Kent, it was so cold that once the de-icing train had gone through, the tracks froze over again.

Conditions were so bad north of London that some rail managers were advising commuters not to travel today. More than 200 commuters were stranded at Victoria station for up to four hours. Former Bill actress Joy Beadle, 34, was at Victoria at 10.30pm to catch a train home to Whitstable - at 5am, nearly seven hours later, she was still trying to get there.

Air travellers were hit too, with hundreds of flights cancelled at Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted. There were problems with bad weather at foreign airports, not just in Britain.

At Heathrow today a backlog left some planes without a stand at which to park. Among passengers stranded was Ruthie Henshall, star of hit musical Chicago, whose plane had been due to arrive from New York at 8.50am. It touched down at 10.30am but at noon was still on the tarmac with its passengers inside.

Kristinko Cik, 36, whose flight home to Vienna was cancelled, said: "In Austria we have more snow and flights can still take off. It is unbelievable that a few snowflakes caused so much trouble."