HELENSBURGH'S MSP has lashed out at the Scottish Government's "mismanagement" of the country's railways after it was revealed that fines handed out to ScotRail for missing targets have topped £11 million.
Jackie Baillie accused the government of "turning a blind eye" to problems in the country's transport system amid ongoing disruption to local rail routes.
On Friday alone more than a dozen trains on the Helensburgh, Balloch, Dumbarton Central and Dalmuir routes ran, or are due to run, with three carriages instead of six, due to faulty and broken down trains.
READ MORE: ScotRail slashes capacity on busy routes due to train faults
The latest figures show that almost two-thirds of rail-performance targets were missed in the third-quarter of last year, causing the franchise to be fined £790,558 for failing passengers during this period.
Passengers travelling from Dumbarton, Balloch and Helensburgh have experienced daily delays and cancellations since October last year and now "short formed" trains are becoming an increasingly frequent occurrence.
Franchise holder Abellio has now been fined a total of £11.2m for failing to meet targets since it took over the operation of ScotRail services in 2015.
Across ScotRail's network on Friday, more than 120 services were run with fewer coaches than planned, with the company blaming faulty trains and a shortage of train crew.
The company has been criticised for not including commuters on the Helensburgh, Balloch and Dumbarton lines in a limited 'free travel' offer to season ticket holders on routes which have been worst affected by delays and cancellations in recent months.
And Ms Baillie warned that total is set to grow without a significant improvement in the service.
Ms Baillie said she is continuing to raise local issues with both Alex Hynes, managing director of the ScotRail Alliance, and the Cabinet Secretary for Transport, Michael Mathieson.
She said: “The SNP’s mismanagement of our railways is causing chaos for passengers and has resulted in more than £11m worth of fines during the current franchise so far.
“The Transport Secretary has repeatedly turned a blind eye to the problems in the transport system and has allowed Abellio to miss target after target.
“Passengers deserve a reliable train service. It’s time to end the chaos on our railways and the suffering of hard-pressed commuters across the country.”
But according to Transport Scotland, the government's transport agency, the fines referred to by Ms Baillie do not relate to the reliability of train services themselves but to facilities, cleanliness and staffing of trains and stations.
A spokeswoman said: “ScotRail’s performance, in terms of cancellations and reliability, over the last 12 months hasn’t been good enough – that’s undeniable and why we took the serious contractual step of issuing a remedial plan notice, and we now expect to see improvements.
“These penalties relate, quite separately, to the SQUIRE regime, which measures performance of facilities and services at stations and on trains, such as station ticket offices, cleanliness and staffing.
"The regime is one of the toughest in the UK and all penalties accrued are reinvested to improve the customer experience, examples of this includes station improvements and 200 body-cams for staff.
“The most recent SQUIRE results showed welcome improvements in comparison with previous periods, not least in those areas related to the large increase in staffing.
"As the benefits of ScotRail’s ongoing recruitment continue to bed in, we expect to see even further improvements in future SQUIRE results bringing with that a better overall passenger experience.”
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