Number of Scotrail trains ‘skip-stopping’ on the rise

● 27 services a day miss stations between August and February

The number of Scotrail trains skipping stops has rocketed by 77 per cent since last August, MSPS have been told.

Some 27 trains a day missed intermediate station stops between August and February, figures provided to Midscotland and Fife Green MSP Mark Ruskell showed.

That compares to around 15 trains a day between January and August last year, and 20 for the whole of 2017.

The practice is aimed at minimising knock-on delays to other trains but has infuriated passengers left stranded.

In an answer to a Parliamentary question from Mr Ruskell, transport minister Humza Yousaf said: “Between 20 August 2017 and 3 February 2018, there were 3,684 separate incidences of skip-stopping reported to Transport Scotland. This is 1.06 per cent of the total numbers of services planned to be run over this period (348,132 in total).”

The minister previously revealed 0.6 per cent of trains skipped stops between 8 January and 19 August last year. Scotrail operates about 2,500 services a day.

Scottish Greens transport spokesman John Finnie said: “It might seem a small proportion, but behind these figures is massive inconvenience encountered by commuters the length and breadth of the country on a daily basis.”

Scottish Conservative transport spokesman Jamie

0 Skip-stopping is aimed at minimising knock-on delays but has infuriated passengers left stranded Greene: “I understand the reasons behind doing it to keep the network flowing, but to customers it is effectively a cancelled train and a huge inconvenience to them.”

Scottish Labour transport spokesperson Colin Smyth said: “It is bad enough that passengers are having to put up with fares rising above wages, overcrowded and cancelled trains, but even when their train isn’t cancelled, they are waiting on the platform worrying about whether their train will even stop.”

However, the Scotrail Alliance with track owner Network Rail said the situation had improved, and the proportion of trains skipping stops between 4 February to 3 March was 0.7 per cent.

An alliance spokesperson said: “Our performance hasn’t been good enough in recent months, but these figures show things are improving. Fewer than 1 per cent of all scheduled services missed a station in recent weeks, and we’re working hard to reduce this even further. Skip-stopping is something that we only do when absolutely necessary, to prevent further disruption across the network. We are very clear that it should always be a last resort.”