ScotRail focused on improving punctuality, customers told
ScotRail is making an "incredible" effort to improve the punctuality of trains on Scotland's railways, the head of the train company has said.
ScotRail is making an "incredible" effort to improve the punctuality of trains on Scotland's railways, the head of the train company has said.
Abellio ScotRail managing director Phil Verster insisted he wanted the service operator to "be in a better place with train punctuality performance".
He insisted it would "absolutely not" reach the point where the number of trains running late could force the Scottish Government to end Abellio's contract.
Mr Verster also promised travellers would be "significantly impressed" by new trains which are due to start coming into service about a year from now.
More than 19,000 people have signed a petition calling on transport minister Humza Yousaf to "make ScotRail bosses improve Scotland's trains or strip them of their contract".
The campaigning organisation 38 Degrees said: "It is vital for Scotland that we have a train service that is affordable and runs on time.
"ScotRail bosses have been providing a poor service for months and the Scottish Government could be finally about to get tough on them."
Its Scottish head Stewart Kirkpatrick said: "We've been bombarded with stories from members across Scotland of delays, frustrations, missed appointments, important life events impacted by the poor service offered by ScotRail and they've had enough."
A total of 89.6% of all ScotRail services either arrive on time or are less than five minutes late, according to Mr Verster, just 0.7 points below the company's target of 90.3%.
He added: "I definitely want us to be in a better place with train punctuality performance.
"We're around 0.7% off where we want to be and we are putting an incredible amount of effort to recover that performance because we know how important that is."
He said that a "massive increase" in people using the trains resulted in capacity issues which has "contributed more and more to trains running slower".
Mr Verster said: "In the next two years we are taking the fleet size from around 800 carriages to 1,000 carriages, that is a massive addition of capacity and on some routes such as Aberdeen to Inverness capacity will increase by 75%.
"Punctuality will be addressed over the next months and has already improved in the last four weeks.
"We are only about 11 months away from the first new trains being introduced on the railways, it's not two years, it starts in a year's time.
"Our customers are going to be significantly impressed with our transformation in the next couple of years."
Labour transport spokesman Neil Bibby said: "This petition should serve as a wake-up call to the SNP government. Scotland's rail passengers are fed up with the poor service they are receiving.
"A third of all routes in Scotland have services that are late more often than they are on time while the Scottish Government's cap on rush-hour fares has increased by over 23% since 2011, and Abellio is raking in a £1 million-a-month profit from the franchise.
"The Scottish Government received an improvement plan from ScotRail in September but services are still unacceptable.
"It is time for Humza Yousaf to explain to passengers what improvements he is going to make and when these improvements will take place."
Campaigners met the transport minister, with Mr Yousaf stating afterwards: This was a welcome opportunity to meet with passengers who are clearly passionate about Scotland's railways and have some interesting ideas about what can be done to make the system more effective.
I agreed to take these back to ScotRail with a view to some detailed analysis being carried out on how workable they are and how they could complement what is already in the pipeline.
I took the opportunity to assure those in attendance that working alongside my officials and ScotRail on this issue is currently my top priority and I look forward to seeing some significant improvements, especially once the winter weather is out the way.
That's not to say performance can't be improved in the short-term, and I will be reading ScotRail's improvement plan with great scrutiny.''