SCOTRAIL has come under fire after a weekend of serious disruption to services at Glasgow Central station.
Serious damage to overhead lines left some passengers stranded on trains for hours late on Saturday and others struggling to get home as services were cancelled and the station closed.
Meanwhile, it had emerged that ScotRail missed performance targets in 22 out of 34 areas in the first months of this year. The operator said it would keep improving its level of service.
The high level at Glasgow Central station was shut down completely at 10:45pm on Saturday after 10 trains travelling on its routes lost power shortly after 9pm. Staff had helped all stranded passengers off the affected services by 1am on Sunday, but disruption continued throughout the day.
Train lines re-opened at 1pm but ScotRail then announced an early end to the day to allow essential repairs to be carried out.
Robert Samson, of passenger group Transport Focus, told the BBC’s Good Morning Scotland: “It was a major disruption ... overhead lines do come down, but passengers were trapped on a train for two to three hours. Glasgow Central station was closed for a time.
“At that time of night, it was difficult to get replacement buses for the number of services that were cancelled. I think there has to be a review to see how it was handled. I believe they did their best under difficult circumstances, but a lot of people would have been inconvenienced.”
ScotRail’s performance is measured by Transport Scotland using quarterly figures known as the Service Quality Incentive Regime (Squire). These are linked to financial penalties for failing to meet benchmarks.
The company previously claimed it had signed up to what it described as the “toughest service quality regime in the UK” and that the penalties were not fines, as “the money gets put back into Scotland’s railways”. According to the Scottish Government, ScotRail accumulated a record total of £1.6 million in financial penalties over the last three months, almost £400,000 more than in the previous three months.
The latest figures show ScotRail failed to hit targets in several main areas. These included litter, seating, refreshments, ticket machines, train and station toilets, cleanliness and car parks.
Station CCTV saw one of the biggest shortfalls in performance at 77.8 per cent – well short of its 95 per cent benchmark.
The cut in the number of CCTV monitoring staff is the subject of a continuing union dispute and a strike is planned for Saturday, May 19, the day of football’s Scottish Cup final.
In 2015 Abellio ScotRail made a profit of £9.5m but it posted a loss of £3.37m the following year.
ScotRail said it had developed detailed plans to tackle the main issues which lead to Squire failures. It said it had identified 10 priority areas, which had led to improvements in on-train ticket inspections and booking office opening times.
“These are not fines – it’s a reinvestment fund that drives standards even higher, and every penny raised through the fund gets put back into enhancing Scotland’s railway,” a spokesman said.
“We have developed detailed plans to keep improving the high level of service our customers quite rightly expect.”
A Transport Scotland spokesman said: “This level of penalties is disappointing, especially in comparison to the corresponding quarter in 2016/17. We have challenged ScotRail robustly on the issues which are contributing towards not only the Squire performance but the non-delivery of the fundamental expectation of staffed stations and trains.
“As a result, ScotRail has committed to two reviews, one on staffing and recruitment and the other to produce a recovery plan to focus on more effective methods to resolve and repair faults.”
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