Rush-hour safety fears as commuters face new rail chaos
COMMUTERS endured yet another day of misery yesterday as dozens of trains were cancelled across scotland.
Furious passengers were left to stand in severely overcrowded carriages on the trains that did run, which some describing the situation as a ‘serious health and safety risk’.
scotrail blamed a signalling problem at Perth for the latest chaos, with more than 70 services thought to be affected.
At least 49 trains were cancelled, including 16 on the Fife circle as well as others between edinburgh, Glasgow, Falkirk and Aberdeen.
Around 50 trains ran with fewer carriages than normal due to ‘staff shortages and technical issues’.
the latest disruption comes amid growing anger over timetable changes which came into effect last week. only yesterday it was revealed that scotrail paid passengers more than £1million in compensation for delays in the past 18 months.
rail passengers from around the country took to social media to vent their frustrations at yesterday’s disruption.
one angry commuter wrote: ‘serious health and safety risk still letting more people on a train that’s already packed.’
Another said: ‘Another day another set of cancelled trains. scotrail single-handedly grinding scotland to a halt.’
Another tweeted directly to the train operator, urging transport minister michael matheson to intervene.
conservative msP Liam Kerrsaid: ‘the last thing anyone wants is this kind of chaos first thing on a monday morning. unfortunately, commuters across scotland are becoming used to it. scotrail needs to up its game, especially as we approach the festive period.’
A scotrail spokesman said: ‘We are sorry to our customers who experienced disruption to their journey this morning. Network rail engineers worked as quickly as possible to fix the signal fault and return services to normal.’
Jamie Greene, scottish conservative transport spokesman said: ‘the failure of scotrail to staff trains properly is dismal. commuters are sick and tired of cancelled, late and dangerously overcrowded trains. this is the latest of many disruptions yet the sNP continues to do nothing.’
A transport scotland spokesman said: ‘At a time when we should be celebrating the biggest increase in services and capacity, we are once again talking about performance and cancellations.
‘underlying reasons, such as staff training and industrial action, are already well documented. While some are resolved and staff recruitment is ongoing, further action is required to address this.’
scotrail managing director Alex Hynes claimed recent disruption has been caused by late delivery of new trains by Hitachi and Wabtec and recent industrial action by the rmt union. He said: ‘We know this isn’t acceptable, and are sorry about this.’
But speaking on BBc radio scotland, rmt scotland organiser mick Hogg claimed scotrail was having to rely on staff working overtime to run services.
He said: ‘the fact of the matter is that scotrail do not have the resources to do the training and run scotland’s trains.’
Comment – Page 16
‘Grinding Scotland to a halt’