ScotRail in trouble?
ScotRail given eight weeks to improve performance after Scottish Government issues a remedial plan notice.
SCOTRAIL has been told by Transport Scotland that services must improve, and that it has eight weeks to submit plans on how to achieve this.
The Scottish Government issued a remedial plan notice on December 24, after cancellations in the Suburban East Sector exceeded the Breach Performance Level between November 11 and December 8 (Period 9). The area covered is Edinburgh-Bathgate, Dunblane, Fife Circle, Tweedbank and North Berwick.
ScotRail blamed the late delivery of new trains and Inter7City High Speed Trains, plus the need to train staff on them, as a reason for poor performance, as well as an RMT overtime ban that prevented staff training. The operator informed Transport Scotland of the cancellations that indicated a performance breach on December 20.
The remedial plan notice also applies pre-emptively to SR’s overall performance, which is expected to drop below the agreed Public Performance Measure (PPM) during Period 10 (December 9-January 5).
“We have stressed many times that ScotRail must improve, but too often passengers have been left disappointed,” said Michael Matheson, Cabinet Secretary for Transport, Infrastructure and Connectivity.
He added: “This month should have been a celebration of the biggest increase in services and capacity, enabled by our ambitious electrification programme. Instead, we are taking this contractual step of issuing a remedial plan notice.”
ScotRail Alliance Managing Director Alex Hynes said: “The disruption has been caused by late delivery of new trains by Hitachi and Wabtec which means the training that is required for our traincrew, on new trains and new routes, has had to be compressed into a very short space of time. Day-to-day services have had to be cancelled to allow our people to take part in training.”
He added: “RMT industrial action meant there was an overtime ban for some of our people, which lasted for several weeks. This is now resolved, but made the problem of traincrew training worse.”
Hynes said training was ongoing and that this will allow services to return to normal, although disruption will continue while conductors and drivers are trained.
Seventy Class 385s are on order from Hitachi, of which 35 are in Scotland. Deliveries should have started in September 2017 ahead of an introduction into traffic that December, but that was delayed owing to problems with the trains. This was further compounded by problems with drivers’ visibility.
Class 385s eventually entered traffic in July, and only took over all Edinburgh-Glasgow via Falkirk High services in December 2018 - a year later than planned.
The Inter7City HSTs should have been introduced from last May, but problems discovered in the overhaul and refurbishment meant that was missed. So far, only one of 26 sets is in traffic, with ten ‘classic’ (unrefurbished) sets in use. SR still aims to have all IC7 sets in traffic by the end of 2019.