Abellio: the positives… and the negatives

In the summary of Abellio’s rail operations history across the UK, Industry Insider paints an excessively charitable picture of Abellio’s record in Scotland

(RAIL 965).

Of course, it came to the franchise promising investment, and in my view the repurposed HSTs have generally been a hit with the public, even if the modifications took far longer than planned (the reason probably lying elsewhere).

On the other hand, the new Hitachi Class 385s, fundamental to exploiting the gains from the Edinburgh-Glasgow Improvement Programme, were severely delayed after it became clear that drivers couldn’t properly see the colour lights through the curved windscreens.

Abellio must share some of the blame for this. And it certainly does on the failure to have enough drivers to operate the service, when the units did arrive.

More importantly, throughout the 2016-19 period, the quality of the day-to-day service fell well below expectations, even if the key metrics were somewhat better than the worst English operators (not something of much relevance to Glasgow and Edinburgh commuters). Cancellations to the infrequent service on the Highland rural lines were a particular bane.

Unlike UK transport ministers, who seem to prefer making silly videos to taking action on failing franchises, Scottish transport ministers (admittedly only when pushed by other MSPs) demanded improvements from Abellio, following public anger with the poor franchise performance.

A performance improvement plan notice was issued by ministers in January 2017, followed by the more serious ‘remedial plan notice’ served on Abellio at the end of 2018.

Problems continued, such that during 2019, at my office in Edinburgh, it was like a re-run of Reggie Perrin with staff recounting ScotRail’s service problems and different excuses every day. In my personal experience, a failure to prioritise revenue protection was a significant problem.

When the demanded improvements didn’t materialise, the Scottish Government had no option but to nationalise the franchise. The moral is clear: promises of future improvements cannot compensate for a failure to do the day job.

Rob Falcon, Edinburgh