Action plan falters as rail sector falls further behind its punctuality target
SCOTLAND’S train services have got worse since an emergency improvement plan was announced last month, new data suggests. New figures for the four weeks to Saturday, October 15, found that 90.2 per cent of services arrived within five minutes of their schedule. That is down from the figure of 90.8 per cent, well below a target of 92.5 per cent, that sparked a mid-September plan to sort out the system.
Passengers have complained of crowded services and continued lateness throughout the autumn.
Industry insiders stress that half of these problems stem from state-owned track provider Network Rail. This summer its regulator, the UK Office of Road and Rail (ORR), praised the firm for improving its performance despite missing its targets.
It has a history of backlogs in both renewals and maintenance, with insiders saying some key infrastructure, such as its Yoker signalling centre for its north Clyde lines, which provide services between Helensburgh and Edinburgh, would have to be replaced within the next year.
Scottish Labour’s transport spokesman Neil Bibby was critical. He 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 improvement plan 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.”
A spokesman for the ScotRail Alliance, which includes both train operator Abellio and Network Rail, insisted the new performance plan would deliver improvements, if not straight away.
He stressed the ORR had praised Network Rail for cutting the number of failures in signalling or overhead wires.
The new plan should see a greater focus on monitoring kit on heavily used parts of the system with, according to insiders, engineers being told not to wait until parts break down before replacing them.
Parts of central Scotland’s rail network saw unusually heavy use over the summer, when Glasgow Queen Street station’s upper level was closed to make improvements to the line to Edinburgh. This, said industry sources, had two effects: Lines were under more pressure than ever but could not undergo a normal level of maintenance. Some of the problems experienced this autumn were created during summer.
Seasoned railway watchers, meanwhile, add that train operator Abellio – under fire from Labour and other critics – is at an early stage of its franchise. That means that it is currently investing to meet the terms of that contract – such as retrofitting trains with electric sockets and wifi – and this may be having an impact on services.
Such start-up problems, veterans point out, affected the reputation of Virgin’s West Coast mainline service between Scotland and England during its early years.
The ScotRail Alliance spokesman added: “We are installing state-of-theart signalling technology that allows more trains to run on sections of track, improves safety and reduces energy consumption. It will also mean more reliable journeys with fewer delays and a much improved passenger experience.”