ScotRail Alliance Managing Director Alex Hynes will outline plans to further improve train services in the North East later today.
The North East of Scotland Transport Partnership (NESTRANS) will hear the plans at their board meeting in Aberdeen this afternoon.
The meeting forms part of the ScotRail Alliance’s commitment to engage with stakeholders across the country.
In the past, the timetable structure in the area meant that local, regional and intercity customers travelled on the same services, which resulted in busy trains and less frequent services for local communities.
ScotRail has worked with NESTRANS to develop a new structure which separates local and intercity services, resulting in more seats for both local and intercity customers.
By creating an interchange station at Montrose, it has allowed for more local services to operate at stations like Laurencekirk and Stonehaven, providing customers with more options for travel.
This has meant daily services at Laurencekirk increased from 24 to 40 in December 2018 and daily services at Stonehaven increased from 50 to 71, with more than 5,000 extra seats each day along the route. A regular service also provides opportunity for better integration with local bus services.
Over the course of the next year, ScotRail will introduce more Inter7City trains with faster journeys, more local services and better connections to trains to and from the Central Belt.
ScotRail Alliance Managing Director Alex Hynes said:
“The importance of engaging with stakeholders and local politicians, gaining valuable feedback from their constituents, and sharing our plans to improve cannot be underestimated.
“We’ve made a number of changes to our timetables as a direct result of feedback from stakeholders and customers.
“In December we delivered the first stage of improvements to our timetable, with more to come for our customers over the next year. These improvements are delivering more seats, faster journeys and more services for our customers.”