THE information that ScotRail has paid out more than £500,000 to travellers with most of the cash being paid out for delayed trains (“ScotRail pays out more than £500,000 to travellers over complaints”, The Herald, February 18) will probably result in the comparison that trains in some other countries (especially Switzerland) all travel to schedule. The question seems to be that if the Swiss can run trains on time, why cannot we?
I have travelled on countless Swiss trains and they do indeed run on time. However what I have noticed is that they do not travel very quickly and on occasions when they are ahead of schedule, they stop between stations. When they start up again they arrive at the next station at the scheduled time. Also, if they find themselves running late, they speed up.
It would seem to be the easiest thing in the world to make trains run to schedule if you allow lots of time for the journey so that there is lots of leeway to make up for unexpected delays. I wonder who would like train journeys of extended time just so that the train would arrive when they were scheduled? Perhaps ScotRail should put the decision to its customers and ask us whether we want shorter scheduled journey times (which arrive on time most of the time) or longer journey times which arrive on time all of the time?
Colin Gunn,
259 Kingsacre Road, Glasgow.
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