It’s one of those things that you know full well is going to happen, but you can’t quite believe it until it does: the great holiday transport shutdown. It was brought home to me once again this year when I glanced at the Transport for London website. Click on the picture of a rather stylish Christmas cracker, labelled “festive travel”, and you might conclude that “travel” is an optimistic word. It is no coincidence that TfL’s gold and silver cracker is depicted in two severed pieces.

Day-to-day provision over the Christmas fortnight is complicated, or as the site rather charmingly says, “every day is slightly different”. So it’s not until you reach 25 December that the harsh truth hits: “There are no public transport services on this day,” it begins. That’s right, no public transport; none at all. It is the same in the UK’s other big cities.

It turns out that private companies are running lunch cruises on the Thames, and the “famous” London black cabs (as TfL describes them) will be touting for – surcharged – fares. Boris bikes will be ready and waiting on their stands (for the reasonably fit and sober). But the equally famous red buses and trains that make up one of the most comprehensive underground networks in the world will be celebrating Christmas in their depots, as they have done now for many years.

Indeed, pretty much everything, bar the rare corner shop, will also be closed. You may see little clutches of tourists wandering around, stunned by the desolation. Most city streets will be eerily quiet. On this day, pretty much the whole of Britain seems to be on hold, before the mayhem of the Boxing Day sales.

Now there will be those – and I am among them – who rather like the Christmas quiet of urban streets. I also understand that because many people take time off between Christmas and new year, it makes sense for the transport companies to use the downtime for necessary maintenance. And with Christmas the one time of year when this country’s increasingly scattered families come together, employers should do their best to give people at least that day off.

But it is hard to believe that a network which runs buses (at least in London) around the clock, runs transport for free on New Year’s Eve, and is preparing to extend the tube service until dawn at weekends, cannot drum up the staff to operate at least some of the system on Christmas Day, and the same with the rail network. There is a sizeable minority who do not celebrate Christmas who could surely be encouraged to work (at a premium).

What currently happens is that people who want to travel to be with friends or family have to extend their stay, pay premium cab prices or drive themselves (and pass on the drink). Or, of course, not go at all. Other countries manage to keep a modicum of public transport going through their festive season – as illustrated by those baffled Christmas tourists in London – so why can’t, or won’t, we?

The reasons most frequently cited are the cost, staffing difficulties and low demand – excuses that reinforce each other. Provide a reliable service and let’s see who comes. As for cost, why not get imaginative?

London’s free transport on New Year’s Eve has in the past been sponsored by a drinks company, although TfL will pick up the bill this year. How about major retailers chipping in to sponsor Christmas Day buses as a gesture of thanks to their customers who have spent so much (and will be back on Boxing Day)? New-fangled outfits, such as Uber, might help, but – as we saw in Sydney during the terrorist siege, you can’t count on them not to exploit scarcity for profit. So how about a fleet of minibuses (which stand idle during school holidays) to ply regular routes from 9am to 9pm? They could be driven by volunteers, and insured by the city transport companies they are replacing.

Let this be the last Christmas Day when the car-free or less mobile are marooned in their homes or charged an arm and a leg to go anywhere.