That's all well and good for LNER, but down in GN land it won't involve changes of train etc. as there will be no trains at all, as such what else could be said?
Plans are being worked on but any replacement bus services will be very limited compared to the train service - for starters, the amount of buses that would be required to provide anything even vaguely close would be astronomical.
Even if you could source enough buses, the length of time the journies would take, the changes that would need to be involved and the practicalities of actually running such a service would be extremely difficult to manage, no doubt resulting in lots and lots of angry passengers.
With that in mind using "Do not travel" to try and put off anybody making non-essential journies seems fairly reasonable.
I often work in London and also visit most weekends so i’m Well qualified to talk about the leadings on the ECML south of Stevenage.
There’s never a good time to do this work but trust me, although the train’s are busy at weekends they’re far less busy than on a typical weekday in the rush hour. Also fewer trains run at weekends, again underlining that fewer people will be impacted.
I can only remember one other occasion in the last 20 years when there were no trains from Stevenage so this work is pretty much unprecedented.
Personally, if I do travel into London that weekend I’ll either:
1. Drive to Cockfosters and get the Piccadilly Line
2. Drive to Hertford East for a train to Liverpool Street
Both options will take far longer than the normal 24 minute train journey.
This work has to be done, I know I will benefit from the additional platform at Stevenage.