CAMPAIGNERS have criticised the "shocking failure" of performance forecasting for Britain's newest railway which they say has led to cuts to the service.

New figures show that while there were 1.3m passenger journeys were made on the Borders Railway in the first 12 months of operation, broadly in line with business case projections - there were huge disparities when it came to the performance of individual stations.

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The latest figures came as ScotRail revealed plans to increase capacity on peak-time trains on the Borders Railway from December 12.

David Spaven of the Borders Rail Monitor group was concerned that three of the four stations in Midlothian, had substantially fewer passengers than business case forecasts, in part a reflection of poor levels of reliability.

The Herald:

Shawfair produced roughly only a seventh of the journeys that were originally forecast, and at Gorebridge and Eskbank numbers dropped by around a half from the predictions. At Newtongrange there was a nine percent drop, But all three Borders stations performed massively better than forecast, nearly eight times better in the case of Tweedbank, and over four times better at Galashiels and Stow.

The monitoring group said the slump in Midlothian was in reflection of the poor levels of reliability on the Borders Railway, with stations being particularly affected by trains which skip intermediate stops in order to catch up time.

Rail in Midlothian has to compete with much more intensive bus services than are available from the Borders to Edinburgh, the group said.

Mr Paven said: "If we had had robust forecasting five years ago, the Borders stations’ forecasts would not have been so ludicrously pessimistic, the rail project’s business case would have been far better, double tracking would not have been cut back from 16 miles to nine and a half miles, and the railway would have been much more reliable than it has proved to be in practice."

Trains started running on the railway, which extends for 35 miles from Tweebank to Edinburgh on September, 6, 2015.

The Herald: The new Borders Railway runs from Edinburgh Waverley to Tweedbank, but campaigners want to see it extended further south to Carlisle

Critics have said the first year of the Borders Railway has been characterised by delays and disruption - blamed largely on poor planning for the £300 million line.

On September this year, it emerged that during the best week’s performance, in March, fewer than half the trains arrived on time at Waverley station in the Scottish capital. In the worst week, in December 2015, only one in eight trains arrived punctually in Edinburgh.

The new line improvements will see capacity doubled on two "key" services and allow access to hundreds of additional seats each week.

The number of carriages will be doubled from two to four on two peak-time trains, the 07:58 from Tweedbank to South Gyle and the 16:52 Edinburgh Waverley to Tweedbank.

It will provide more than 270 extra seats each day and means that all services leaving Tweedbank between 07:00 and 08:00 will have at least three carriages.

The changes also mean four off-peak services every weekday will also gain an extra two carriages, adding a further 2,700 extra seats each week.

A third benefit of the new timetable sees ScotRail beginning to use a limited number of Class 170 trains on Borders, resulting in a number of services throughout the day having three carriages instead of two.

Phil Vester, managing director of the ScotRail Alliance said: "The Borders Railway is now firmly established as an attractive and convenient public transport option, with strong demand, particularly at peak times. We have responded by making a number of changes to add capacity when it is most needed, providing our customers with more comfortable journeys to and from the capital.

“And further capacity enhancements will follow in 2017 and again in 2018 when we will have a further 200 carriages available for customers across Scotland.”

The Herald: Humza Yousaf MSP

Transport Minister Humza Yousaf said: "I am pleased that, working closely with ScotRail, extra capacity during the busy peak periods has been identified and secured for 2017.

"This is in addition to our commitment to provide more capacity from late 2018 onwards as a result of our investment into retaining 13 Class 170 trains as part of the Revolution in Rail service enhancements."