Transport Scotland rail suggestions will disadvantage passengers

Transport Scotland has published a consultation document for the rail service in Scotland. The report makes a series of suggestions including that journey times should be extended and that they reduce the number of people allowed to stand on trains.

The report also suggests that certain routes be reduced or have the competition eliminated and that peak travellers should pay even more for a ticket.

Scottish Conservative Transport Spokesman, Alex Johnstone MSP said:

"These suggestions from Transport Scotland are totally unhelpful and if they had been even slightly thought through it would be clear that many of them would disadvantage passengers. The answer to providing a punctual train service is to ensure trains run on time and not to increase the estimated journey time as so they are given an allowance to run late.

"Equally, limiting the number of people who are allowed to stand on trains as so they can be left standing on the platform is absurd and will only anger passengers who are forced to wait even longer for a train. The priority for Transport Scotland must always be to reduce journey times for passengers and these proposals would achieve the opposite of this.

"The number of services that Transport Scotland are proposing to cut or change would see a severe reduction in the variety of routes offered to Scottish passengers. Cutting cross border trains would result in far poorer services to Dundee, Aberdeen and Inverness and the Caledonian Sleeper provides a hugely important service that those who travel on it swear by.

"Their proposals to reduce the number of providers is merely a thinly veiled excuse to abolish competition on our rail routes. If this competition is taken away it will be the passengers who suffer further as they are forced to settle for a provider with no incentive to provide a cheaper or higher quality service.

"It seems Transport Scotland's solution to overcrowding is to make rail travel more unappealing."

The report can be found here: http://www.transportscotland.gov.uk/files/documents/reports/j203179/j203179.pdf

The following paragraphs are contained within the report:

4.8 However, for current passengers, reliability and punctuality of services is one of the top priorities. Accordingly, timetable adjustments could be made to increase the time journeys take which would allow more flexibility and thereby improve train performance levels, increasing the proportion of punctual trains. However increasing journey time may result in a reduction in the number of train services that can be provided.

5.6 We are therefore considering whether we should include a measure for how many people can be carried on a train; as opposed to just relying on how many minutes a passenger may have to stand. The carrying capacity could for example be set at 105% on certain types of service. We envisage that this would only affect the peak services,

6.27 Currently the fares mechanism is designed to encourage passengers to travel in the off-peak period, where they can. However the differential between peak and off-peak fares is generally too small to have any significant impact on changing behaviour. We are considering increasing the differential in order to free capacity in the peak period to accommodate future growth. Modelling indicates a differential of at least 20% between peak and off-peak fares would be required to have any significant effect on passenger behaviours.

11.12 We are considering a number of options for the future provision of sleeper services, for instance: removing or increasing financial support; and reducing the provision, either through removing the Highland or Lowland service, or by running the Lowland services to and from Edinburgh only.

11.13 We are also carrying out additional research and financial modelling and are looking at a number of options including letting the sleeper services as a separate franchise. This option may enable greater commercial opportunities for the service provider and facilitate investment in the fleet. As a specialised service, it may benefit from more focused and specialised management. A sleeper-only franchise service could also attract new entrants with innovative ideas to the rail franchise market

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