As travellers queued for buses and overground trains, and roads into London were clogged by an extra 50,000 cars, London Underground management said it would not increase its 3% pay offer to train drivers.
Twenty-four strike action planned to start next Tuesday evening is likely to go ahead as a result.
The RMT union wants 5.7% for its drivers, while the Aslef union wants a "substantial increase". Union leaders claim that the strike was called after management declined an offer to go to binding arbitration.
Parallel action by RMT and Aslef drivers halted the network yesterday - 15 out of 600 drivers who convey the normal three million a day passengers crossed picket lines outside tube stations. Police were called to Edgware Road station in west London, when managers complained of "aggressive picketing" by some strikers.
The transport secretary, Alistair Darling, and the London mayor, Ken Livingstone, condemned the strike, but disagreed on who was at fault.
Mr Darling blamed the unions: "This strike is completely unnecessary and damaging ... This is not the way to deal with these issues, in this day and age.
"London Underground has already increased pay by 3% on top of a significant increase last year. If the RMT and Aslef remain unhappy, they should talk to management."
Mr Livingstone said London Underground was responsible for a strike that would cost London's economy at least £60m. "This is a completely unnecessary strike. The unions were prepared to go to arbitration, it's the management backed by the government refusing to go." Mr Livingstone takes over responsibility for the tube network next year, and has said that LU's directors will be fired.
Aslef general secretary Mick Rix and RMT general secretary Bob Crow joined a picket line at Golders Green station in north London yesterday morning. Mr Crow said: "I absolutely 100% regret what is happening to the travelling public, but blame for this dispute lies fairly and squarely on LU's doorstep."
Mr Rix said: "All along we have said we are prepared to go to an independent arbitrator to sort out our differences."
A spokeswoman for London Underground said that there was no chance it would increase its offer, and that three previous attempts at arbitration had failed to settle the matter.
Addressing a fringe meeting at the Liberal Democrat conference in Brighton yesterday, Mr Livingstone described the underground as a "crappy system" as he attacked its management for refusing to agree to binding arbitration. It was "a complete lie" to say there was no more money to pay staff. LU directors paid for a chauffeur-driven car pool "so they don't have to use their own crappy system. They have the classic public sector monopoly contempt for their customers and their work force." All LU directors would "go out of the door" when he and his transport adviser got control of the underground, he stated, adding that arbitration would probably have resulted in raising the LU offer by 0.7 or 0.8%.
