14,000 SAY AXE SCOTRAIL
COMMUTER FURY AS PRESSURE GROWS ON ABELLIO
Thousands of rail passengers have called for the Dutch firm in charge of Scotland’s trains to be stripped of their contract.
Almost 14,000 rail users signed a petition demanding action against Abellio over delays and cancellations on ScotRail.
The firm have already been hit with £1.5million in fines for poor service.
Nearly 14,000 people have called for the controversial Dutch firm in charge of Scotland’s train service to be stripped of their contract unelss Scotrail improves.
The online petition urges the Scottish Government to take action against Abellio over the delays and cancellations suffered by commuters using ScotRail.
The firm have already been hit with £1.5million in fines for poor service, the Sunday Mail can reveal.
The pet it ion and the ex p er i enc e s of 70 0 0 passengers on the failing service will be delivered to Transport Minister Humza Yousaf at Holyrood this week.
They want Yousaf to make ScotRai l bosses improve Scotland’s trains or strip the Dutch firm – who are making £1million a month – of their contract.
The £ 7bi l l ion, 10- year contract has a clause allowing it to be cancelled at the halfway point in 2020.
L or n a Gr e enwo o d , campaigns manager at online petitions site 38 Degrees, said: “The huge number of people who have signed the petition and shared their experiences is an indication of the strength of public anger at how ScotRail are being run.
“The stories of 38 Degrees members show the poor service means people are struggling to get on with their l ives , from taking their k ids to school , get t ing to job interviews or making a crucial hospital appointments.
“Transport Minister Humza Yousaf now has to listen to the public and demand that Abellio get their act together or face being stripped of their contract.”
The demand was backed by the Rail Maritime and Transport Union, who last week ended a long- running row with ScotRail over driver- only trains.
The union’s Scottish organiser Gordon Martin said: “It is clear the rail service is deteriorating. We are very much in favour of the railways being brought into public ownership. We want to see them run in the interests of the passengers and the workers that keep the system operating – as opposed to be profits being taken out and used on railways outwith Scotland.
“Taking £1million out a month in profit and investing it in another country is a kick in the teeth to the people of Scotland.”
The RMT will be picketing the SNP conference in Glasgow on Saturday, just hours before Nicola Sturgeon gives a keynote speech.
Martin added: “We have won the dispute to keep guards on trains but we don’t believe that goes far enough.
“We demand stations are properly staffed and resourced and that the infrastructure the trains run on is maintained to a proper standard.”
Scottish Labour transport spokesman Neil Bibby said: “The number of signatures on this petition shows just how disgruntled passengers are with ScotRail services.
“This must serve as a wake-up call to Transport Minister Humza Yousaf.
“It is time for the minister to explain to passengers what improvements he is going to make and when these improvements wi l l take place.
“Travellers have been forced to endure months of chaos, with overcrowding, cancellations and delays.
“Public confidence in our rail network is evaporating and the SNP Government have a duty to listen to passengers’ growing concerns.”
Abellio’s £1.5million fines are for failing to meet acceptable standards since taking over the contract last year.
By contrast, First Group were ordered to pay £576,000 in their last year of running the service.
The fines include £327,000 between April and June for falling below benchmarks such as train seating, toilets, service announcements and reservations. They fell short in six out of 17 categories for standards at stations and nine out of 17 for trains.
Meanwhile, Scottish Labour are demanding passengers are told about the scale of overcrowding on Scotland’s trains.
Under the terms of the Abellio franchise, ScotRail have to advise Transport Scotland on the capacity of every Glasgow to Edinburgh service every four weeks. The group also have to audit passenger numbers on every rail service twice a year. However, the information is not made publicly available. This is in contrast with England and Wales, which publishes the top 10 overcrowded services.
Last week, we revealed Abellio had admitted Scottish trains are run for the benefit of commuters in Holland and that the contract is used to make healthy profits on “limited investment”. We also
revealed 24 out of 75 train services were late more often than they were on time. Bibby said: “What an absolute mess. “The SNP claimed this was a world leading deal for Scottish passengers – but it’s not even the best in the UK.
“Scottish passengers are filling the coffers of the Dutch government to the tune of £1million a month with this deal and the SNP can’t even tell us if the trains are overcrowded.” Ellie Harrison, of the pressure group Bring Back British Rail, said: “The Scottish Government have signed up to an ambitious carbon reduction target but unless we have a fitfor-purpose public transport system we aren’t going to be able to encourage enough people to use trains as an alternative to cars.”
The three worst performing stations – Arbroath, Ardrossan Harbour and Glasgow High Street – saw nine out of 10 services arriving late. A ScotRai l spokeswoman said: “When it comes to our train performance, we set ourselves incredibly high standards.
“The industry punctuality measure shows we are among the top performing operators in the UK.
“We run well over 2000 services a day and a rolling annual figure of around 90 per cent – that means around nine out of 10 t rains ar r ive within five minutes of their scheduled time. That puts us up there in the UK league table.
“However, we have committed to go even higher. Our new faster, longer, greener trains and the work we are doing to upgrade the network will allow us to do that.
“Due to a variety of fa c t or s , our performance has dipped slightly over the course of the past few months. Instead of being around the 90 per cent mark, we are just under it, at 89.6 per cent.
“This slight dip has caused Transport Scotland to activate a part of our contract that calls for us to put in place a performance improvement plan to bring it back up again.” Transport Scotland refused to publish the performance plan because it is “commercially sensitive”.
Yousaf said: “ScotRail’s performance this year has not been at the level the Scottish Government expects, which is why I have taken decisive action in calling for the operators to deliver an improvement plan outlining how they will improve passenger services going forward.
“Transport Scotland and Scottish ministers will be working closely with the franchisee to monitor delivery of this plan and ensure their targets are met.”