Troubled trains go from bad to worse
More services late despite an ‘improvement plan’
THE performance of Scotland’s trains has declined even further since the firm operating them handed over its ‘improvement plan’ to SNP ministers.
Abellio ScotRail has been under fire over the large fall in the number of trains which are on time.
Ministers were handed an ‘improvement plan’ last month outlining efforts to tackle the problems causing delays.
However, it has emerged that performance declined again this month.
Neil Bibby, Scottish Labour’s transport spokesman, lashed out at the ‘shoddy service’ from ScotRail and called for action from Transport Minister Humza Yousaf.
In the four weeks to October 15, 90.2 per cent of trains arrived at the final station within five minutes of the advertised time, compared with 90.8 per cent in the four weeks to September 17.
The figures are well down on the target of 92.5 per cent. In the latest four-week period, a third of all routes in Scotland had services which were late more often than they were on time.
Mr Bibby said: ‘Passengers are fed up with the shoddy service they are receiving from ScotRail, which led to an improvement plan being submitted in September.
‘Commuters will be aghast to discover that hundreds more trains have been late and performance has actually got worse in the four weeks since that was presented.
‘We already know that a third of all routes in Scotland have services which are late more often than they are on time and now the crisis has deepened.
‘With winter fast approaching, passengers deserve a guarantee about when exactly they will see improvements to the punctuality and reliability of services.
‘Transport Minister Humza Yousaf should publish the full improvement plan so we know exactly what changes are to be made.
‘He also needs to tell passengers when his plan will result in real improvements on our railways.’
Campaign group 38 Degrees last week handed a petition signed by 19,242 frustrated commuters to Mr Yousaf, urging him to take action against ScotRail.
The petition says that if Abellio fails to improve then it should lose the contract to operate trains.
It has also emerged that ScotRail has spent £99,000 hiring 130 ‘mystery shoppers’ to determine customer satisfaction. Transport Scotland demanded an improvement plan from the company after concerns about so many trains being late.
Phil Verster, managing director of the ScotRail Alliance, said: ‘The performance improvement plan contains a wide range of actions which by no stretch of the imagination are expected to have an instantaneous step-change impact.
‘You cannot from three weeks draw an inference on a plan that aims to improve performance over three, four or five months.’
Problems also emerged yesterday relating to a new system for issuing tickets on board ScotRail trains.
The company completed the roll-out of new updated wireless machines used by all conductors a fortnight ago.
But the tickets they issue are often failing to activate barriers at stations, meaning staff have to manually let passengers through.
The machines are also reliant on 3G or 4G signal, which is often not available on parts of the network, meaning tickets cannot be issued.
‘Crisis has deepened’