Vastly reduced rail services across Scotland are likely to last for weeks or longer, Scotrail has warned.  

Almost 700 services across the country will be cut from Monday due to a pay dispute which has seen drivers opt not to work overtime. 

The May 2022 timetable had approximately 2,150 weekday services. From next week this will be reduced by a third to 1,456 — with the new timetable in place until the dispute can be resolved.

Scotrial, which was nationalised last month, has been in talks with the Drivers' union Aslef, which has rejected a 2.2% pay offer.  

David Simpson, ScotRail service delivery director, insisted that the decision to reduce services was “temporary”, and blamed the disruption of driver training due to the pandemic for the lack of drivers.  

The Herald:

Mr Simpson said: “I’d hope ‘temporary’ means as short as possible, but it does depend on making some progress with the pay talks which is the root cause of this problem. 

“We’re trying to minimise the impact of this by making the service more predictable to customers and we’ll leave this timetable in place until we make any progress in the pay talks, which will see a resumption of the normal levels of overtime working which are necessary to run the full service because of the impact the pandemic had on our driver training programme over the last couple of years.  

“I think weeks is potentially possible, but we’ll do everything in our power to keep the duration of this as short as possible.” 

Hundreds of trains have been cancelled since 8 May when many drivers opted not to work overtime. Drivers' union Aslef had balloted members for strike action after rejecting a 2.2% pay offer. 

When the new timetable comes into force, evening trains on many routes across Scotland will terminate hours earlier than previously. 

Scotrail has faced criticism for the decision to reduce late-running routes, with some services cut more than during lockdown.  

Mr Simpson said that the new timetable was based on commuters needs, where previously services had been geared to support key workers.  

He added: “We’ve had to make some very difficult trade-offs between producing a timetable we think can be delivered robustly and when we reduce the services to achieve that.  

“It wasn't possible to provide a full-days service on all routes and achieve the reduction in the number of crews we need to run the routes. 

“What we will do, if the timetable remains in place for a little while, is have a review process where we can look at how it’s affecting customers and how it’s being delivered, and if we can make improvements to it, we’ll certainly plan to do that.”  

The Herald:

Scotrail was nationalised in April 

Transport minister Jenny Gilruth was asked about the situation at Holyrood on Wednesday.

She said the temporary timetable was necessary because some drivers “did not take up the option of overtime and rest day working” following the decision by Aslef to ballot for industrial action over pay.

She told MSPs the revised timetable would give a “more stable and reliable service” to passengers.