ScotRail’s commitment to improving standards saw nine out of ten trains meeting the industry performance target, new figures have revealed.
The rail industry standard public performance measure – trains that arrive within five minutes of their scheduled time, having stopped at all scheduled stations – for the four-week period to 15 September was 91.6 percent.
ScotRail has banned the use of skip-stopping, except as a last resort, which makes achieving good performance even more challenging.
Despite the encouraging performance, there were a number of track and signal problems in the period, which had a considerable impact.
The main three incidents that caused performance problems for this period were:
- A person being struck by a train at Bellgrove
- A points failure at Haymarket
- A points failure at Eglinton
ScotRail is continuing to invest to improve services for customers with a £475 million rolling stock investment, following billions of pounds worth of infrastructure upgrades by Network Rail – including the £858million electrification of the line between Edinburgh and Glasgow.
ScotRail Alliance Managing Director Alex Hynes said:
“The fact that more than nine out of ten ScotRail trains met their punctuality target is encouraging, and a sign that the efforts we are making to improve the service our customers receive are paying off.
“But we know that there is more to do, and we share customers’ frustrations when things go wrong. That’s why Network Rail is investing billions of pounds in improved infrastructure and ScotRail is spending hundreds of millions of pounds on new and upgraded trains. It’s all part of our plan to build the best railway Scotland has ever had.”