The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Minister pledges action over ‘skip-stopping’
Practice must be tackled or company will face penalties
ScotRail has been threatened with penalties by the transport minister if it does not tackle “skip-stopping”.
Humza Yousaf has warned that “contractual measures can be enforced” where performance standards are not up to scratch.
That covers “skip-stopping”, which involves services missing out smaller stations at short notice to ensure trains arrive at their final destination on time.
Meanwhile, Mr Yousaf is said to be weighing up a series of public sector bids to take over from ScotRail.
Mairi Evans, the SNP MSP for Angus North and Mearns, has called on the minister to use his powers to intervene over the station missing practice, which she says is frustrating for passengers and risks damaging the economy.
Figures from Transport Scotland show that in Angus and surrounding area alone, there were 19 occasions in the six months to May when stations were missed out with little warning.
In a letter to Ms Evans, the transport minister said they are “continuing to work” with ScotRail over performance – including skip-stopping – but are also prepared to issue penalties.
“ScotRail is expected to reach a benchmark for cancellations and partcancellations which is set out in the franchise,” he said.
“If it consistently does not meet this benchmark or the matching publicperformance-measure benchmark, contractual measures can be enforced.”
He added progress is being made but performance is “not quite where I want it to be yet”.
Responding to a rail strategy consultation, one passenger described it is as a “despicable practice” and reported people being subjected to twohour taxi rides to get to their destination.
Ms Evans said she is pleased to see a reduction in skip-stopping at stations in the north east, but added the figures are still too high.
“Skip-stopping can be very damaging to the local economy – making passengers late for meetings or work at smaller rural locations – and can also cause considerable inconvenience to any passenger who has to continue their journey from anything other than their ticketed destination,” she said.
“The Scottish Government has powers to intervene if the standards drop below an acceptable level and I will continue to press the minister on this issue if ‘skip-stopping’ continues to be an issue.”
ScotRail has defended the practice saying it is a last resort and is only deployed on a “tiny number of occasions”.
A ScotRail Alliance spokesman said: “Late trains have a knock on effect on other services behind them, so taking action to get everything back on time is important. If we don’t, then disruption affects more and more people.
“What we are doing is making sure that we protect the services that carry the most number of people.
“These are the busy commuter routes that operate during the peak. In order to do this, we will make sure any actions we take to recover service after an incident will take place outwith the peak.
“As this only happens on a tiny number of occasions, the chance of this being something that has a big impact on either our overall service or on large numbers of people is minimal.
“Our customers expect us to keep them moving and to run our trains on time. This is exactly what this is about.”
The spokesman added performance has improved again, with 92% of services meeting the time target for the month to June 24.
However, delays and overcrowding have contributed to the Transport Minister coming under pressure to put the franchise into public hands.
Mr Yousaf is looking at five public sector options, including CalMac and the Strathclyde Partnership, to replace Abellio as the ScotRail operator, according to the Sunday Herald.