Londoners face strike's last day

Mike Brown, Managing Director of London Underground told ITV London, "I'm hoping we can meet in the middle. But we've got to hear from them - saying no no no or storming out of meetings clearly doesn't allow for that dialogue."

Unions and tube bosses are due to meet at conciliation service ACAS tomorrow.

More commuters have braved the tube strike this morning with 91% of regular Oyster customers travelling in London. This compares with 86% who used their Oyster cards yesterday.

Reporting on how the Underground has performed so far today, Transport for London said:

• Services operating on 9 of the 11 lines
• Nearly 75 per cent of stations open
• Some 91 per cent of regular Oyster customers have been travelling in London this morning
• Barclays Cycle Hire journeys up 50 per cent for the second day

LU managing director Mike Brown said:

"Many thousands of LU and TfL staff are working hard again today to keep customers informed and to keep London moving and open for business.

"I am grateful to our customers for their patience, and we will be doing everything we can to run as many services as possible. I'm pleased that more staff have come to work today than yesterday.

"My message to the leadership of the RMT and TSSA is 'why wait to sit down with us until Friday?'. They should do the right thing, meet us at Acas today, and suspend this completely unnecessary strike.

Many commuters switched to using the capital's bike hire scheme to get to and from work.

Barclays Cycle Hire journeys were up by 50% yesterday, with almost 30,000 hires.

The same trend has been seen today, with over 11,000 hires by 10am.

Union leader Bob Crow should be renamed "Rio Bob" after he decided to go on holiday to Brazil the week before the Tube strike, Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin said today.

Mr McLoughlin said Mr Crow's decision to go on holiday to Rio de Janeiro made it very difficult for talks to take place between his union, the RMT, and the mayor of London, Boris Johnson.

Replying to a question from Labour MP Dennis Skinner, McLoughlin replied "You say it takes two to talk but if one of the main leaders is out of the country - Rio Bob, I think we should start to call him - then it is very difficult to have those conversations."

Commuters are reporting long queues and delays for buses across London this morning on the last day of this week's tube strike.

Members of the RMT and TSSA unions will end their 48-hour walkout at 9pm tonight and officials will meet Underground bosses tomorrow to try to resolve a row over the closure of Tube ticket offices.

London Underground said more trains were running to more destinations and more stations than yesterday.