ScotRail to follow action points to improve performance

ScotRail is to implement all 20 recommendations from an independent review of its operations, with the aim of lifting performance towards Transport Scotland’s 92.5% punctuality target.

Former TransPennine Express Managing Director Nick Donovan has spent the last few months combing through the way the alliance between ScotRail and Network Rail Scotland works. His recommendations cover both sides of the track and train divide.

ScotRail Alliance Managing Director Alex Hynes said: “Nine out of ten ScotRail trains arrive within their target time, which makes us the best-performing large operator in the UK. But we know our customers demand the highest possible standards, which is why I commissioned an independent review into train service performance in Scotland.

“A lot of hard work will be needed to tackle the underlying problems that can cause performance to fall below the standard our customers expect.”

Asked if there was any priority order to the recommendations, ScotRail Head of Communications David Ross told RAIL that eliminating skip-stopping (where late trains miss stations) was already under way. He added that this was a symptom of wider problems, rather than an underlying reason. Local politicians have criticised skip-stopping.

Donovan recommends that ScotRail Alliance looks at how to create more productive time in line closures (possessions). This reflects wider NR work that’s looking at how signallers and electrical control offices hand lines over to engineers. He suggests that managers check more carefully work done to critical items, to reduce the times they fail. He calls for more work to discover the root causes of failures.

On the operational side of ScotRail, Whifflet and Milngavie merit detailed work to improve right-time departures, according to Donovan. Milngavie in particular is the terminus for trains on the north side of Glasgow and those from Edinburgh via Bathgate. This means that delays here affect both sides of the Central Belt. Improved performance at both places should allow ScotRail to halt skip-stopping, Donovan suggests.

Around Glasgow, the former TPE MD calls for revised plans for electric services. His recommendation states: “A highly optimised service delivery plan may be appropriate, but requires a far more sophisticated set of recovery arrangements to be put in place than is currently the case. If there are insurmountable barriers to achieving a sufficiently resilient recovery plan, then the operational delivery plan needs to be simpler.”

This suggests that current plans rely on everything performing well with little slack to cope with delays, and is similar to the situation Chris Gibb found on GTR when he was asked in 2016 to examine how it could improve poor performance ( RAIL 830).

ScotRail’s current performance sits at 89.7% of trains arriving within five minutes of booked time, on an annualised basis. This places it ninth in the table of 23 operators and above the national average of 88.1%. Measured ‘right-time’ ScotRail scores 55.4% on an annual basis, 16th in the table and one place ahead of GTR and behind the national average of 63.4%.

In terms of delays to ScotRail trains, 56% come from Network Rail (21% infrastructure, 19% operations and 16% external), 36% from itself, 6% from other passenger operators, and 2% from freight operators.

For the full 20 recommendations, see www.railmagazine.com.