One in five trains is now late as ScotRail hits a 12-year low

NEARLY one in five ScotRail services is now late as performance slumps to its lowest level for more than a decade.

Under the £7billion franchise agreement with Dutch firm Abellio, ‘on time’ is defined as being less than five minutes behind schedule.

ScotRail figures show only 80.5 per cent of trains arrived within four minutes and 59 seconds of the timetabled arrival time.

At the two worst stations, Largs in Ayrshire and Milngavie in Dunbartonshire, 73.1 per cent of trains were late.

Scottish Labour transport spokesman Colin Smyth called the performance figures ‘unacceptable’.

He said: ‘These results reaffirm yet again how badly ScotRail are failing Scotland’s rail users with a performance that is the worst of the franchise.

‘Given ScotRail’s performance is getting worse and worse, passengers will be furious that the SNP still refuse to use the “break clause” in the contract to bring Scotland’s railways back into public hands.’

The figures – which cover the period from October 14 to November 10 – show that 80.5 per cent of trains arrived ‘on time’.

It means nearly a fifth of services failed – ScotRail’s worst performance since 2006. The previous month was also a record low.

It is also below the level set out in the franchise agreement, which the operators are meant to meet.

Transport Secretary Michael Matheson agreed in September to waive ScotRail’s performance benchmarks until June.

Abellio, part of Dutch state railway group NS, has run ScotRail since April 2015. It was fined more than £2.2million for performance breaches in the first half of 2018. Mick Hogg, Scottish organiser of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers, said: ‘These latest performance figures are atrocious.’

He added: ‘Abellio ScotRail claim they want to deliver the best railway Scotland’s ever had. But when you have performance figures like these, 40-year-old rolling stock and developments like the recent news that raw sewage will be dropped from trains onto the tracks, it’s more like a shambles.’

Scottish Greens’ transport spokesman John Finnie said:

‘Hasn’t been good enough’

‘Ministers need to be firmer with the franchise operator, they need to speed up the process of bringing about a public sector operator and we need powers over the track network to be fully devolved.’

ScotRail said the five biggest incidents which affected reliability over the month were ‘infrastruc- ture-related’. The firm said skipstopping – where services miss stations – had been reduced. During the month to November 10, 118 trains missed stops against 844 for the same period last year.

ScotRail Alliance managing director Alex Hynes said: ‘The performance of the infrastructure hasn’t been good enough in recent months and I am sorry to customers for the impact this has had.

‘We are doing everything we can to deliver the more punctual service that our customers deserve.’

Mr Hynes’ basic salary last year was £255,000.

The Scottish Government said: ‘Performance isn’t where it should be. Abellio ScotRail are held to account but it must be recognised that Network Rail infrastructure issues are negatively impacting performance.’