Transport system on fast track to disaster

ONLY weeks after it was nationalised, with grand promises of creating a service fit for the 21st century, ScotRail is mired in crisis. Far from heralding a fresh start, the move to public ownership has proved utterly disastrous.

Services are to be slashed by a third – yet we’re asked to believe they’re temporary cuts. And while the railway is hollowed out, the First Minister has flown to the US on a mission to promote independence

It’s a devastating indictment of the kind of cack-handed handling of public transport we have come to expect from Nicola Sturgeon’s blundering government.

Truly, it is an administration with a long record of chaotic mismanagement and serial failure, so it is little wonder its foray into rail travel has gone so badly wrong.

The repercussions will be severe for the economy just as it struggles to remobilise after the pandemic – but also for everyday life. Going for a night out in Edinburgh and getting back home to Fife, for example, entirely by rail, is a non-starter.

The last Edinburgh-Fife/Dundee train is at 8pm, while from Edinburgh to Glasgow 10.15pm is the final service of the evening.

Ministers blame working from home for a sharp fall in the number of rail journeys.

Of course, their public health guidelines were responsible for the shift away from the office.

Yet far from leading by example, thousands of civil servants continue to steer clear of their desks (and some of them work for only four days a week).

Their political masters have done almost nothing to get people back to the office.

Indeed, Miss Sturgeon is a vocal advocate of working from home – despite the enormous damage it has done to our town and city centres.

But disingenuously she now she seeks to use home-working as an excuse for ScotRail’s present predicament.

Meanwhile, the ceaseless war on drivers continues – in the midst of sky-high fuel prices and rising maintenance costs – made worse by potholed roads.

Will the SNP now call a halt to the lunacy of the workplace parking levy, and a host of other anti-motorist measures given that many commuters will be forced back into their cars?

Unfortunately, this latest farrago hardly comes as a surprise.

Taxpayers face a bill of up to £400million for the ferries debacle, then there’s the white elephant of Prestwick Airport.

Now, only weeks after getting its hands on ScotRail, it seems the SNP’s reverse Midas touch is in action again.

How utterly shameful that they have brought a once-proud transport system to its knees within weeks of taking it into public ownership.