WHEN Abellio took over the running of ScotRail last April, the company said there would be more capacity and faster journeys. But 18 months on, passenger satisfaction could not be worse and a third of all routes in Scotland have services that are late more often than they are on time. Abellio said their contract would be a new chapter in the history of the railways, but so far it makes for pretty grim reading.
Will the SNP’s promise to change the rules on who can bid for the railway franchises make a difference? Bizarrely, the current rules state that while public sector companies from other countries can bid, public sector operators based in the UK cannot. So when the ScotRail franchise came up, British public sector companies were excluded from the process but Abellio, a subsidiary of the Dutch state-owned railway, could bid.
None of this would be a problem if Abellio was any good, but its record so far is deeply disappointing and the SNP is right to change the rules. According to a Government spokesman, Transport Scotland has now started the work needed to ensure a public sector body is in a position to bid next time.
The problem is that the next franchise will not start until 2025 and even then it is hard to see who in the public sector would be in a position to bid for the franchise. And in the meantime, passengers still have to squeeze onto packed trains or wait forlornly for their train to arrive in the first place.
There is also a danger that the Government moving to change the rules for the next franchise nearly ten years from now will distract attention from its responsibilities right now. Abellio’s performance so far reflects badly on the company, but it reflects badly on the Government too, which made the appointment. Abellio is also making £1million a month from its ScotRail franchise – it is time we knew what the Government is doing to keep the company to its promises.
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