Scotrail service failures show need to put passengers first
Figures obtained by the Scottish Greens Transport Spokesperson John Finnie MSP show that Scotrail faced penalties of over £3.3 million in 2019, after almost 5000 service fails were recorded across stations and rolling stock.
The data from the Service Quality Incentive Regime (SQUIRE) is gathered by Transport Scotland’s inspectors who audit all 355 ScotRail Stations and a minimum of 190-210 trains at least once every four weekly cycle.
John Finnie MSP said:
“This volume of failures shows that significant improvement is required before the Scottish Government can claim that Scotland’s railways are truly operating in the public’s interest.
“Ticket offices, station lighting, platform shelters and toilets are all hugely important to passengers and it’s disappointing that so many failures have been recorded.
“The current system of franchising public services out to private operators means that private profit becomes the primary concern and as a result services suffer.
“Now that the Scottish Government has announced that it will end Abellio’s reign as the franchisee, there is a real opportunity to put in place a public sector operator who can run our trains exclusively in the public interest.”