THE performance of train services deteriorated in the month after ScotRail presented ministers with an "improvement plan".
Labour said it had benchmark figures which showed in the four weeks to September 17, the firm had 90.8 per cent, against a target of 92.5 per cent, arrived within five minutes of their due time.
Over the same period a third of all routes in Scotland had services which were late more often than they were on time.
Some 90.2 per cent arrived inside the allotted time in the last four weeks.
An improvement plan from ScotRail was submitted to ministers on September 16, and a summary published this week.
Neil Bibby MSP, Scottish Labour’s transport spokesman, said: “Passengers are fed up with the shoddy service they are receiving from ScotRail, which led to an improvement plan being submitted in September.
“Commuters will be aghast to discover that hundreds more trains have been late and performance has actually got worse in the four weeks since that improvement plan was presented.
“We already know that a third of all routes in Scotland have services which are late more often than they are on time, and now the crisis has deepened.
“With winter fast approaching, passengers deserve a guarantee about when exactly they will see improvements to the punctuality and reliability of services."
A Transport Scotland spokesman said: "As has been well-documented in Parliament and elsewhere, the PIP (improvement plan) was requested by Transport Scotland in August, a first draft was received in mid-September, and since then we have worked closely with ScotRail to ensure the plan was fit for purpose.
"The plan was published by ScotRail on Thursday and included an opportunity for the media to question senior management.
“ScotRail now have a very clear plan going forward and have committed extra funding of up to £16 million and additional resources into meeting these tough performance targets.
"We are confident they can get performance back to a level that meets our challenging contract targets, although we accept it won’t be easy.”
It comes after passengers were warned to prepare weeks of disruption as engineering works across the Central Belt lead to more trains being cancelled, less frequent, diverted or replaced by buses for all or part of the route.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel