DURING Euro 2024, there were cries of “are you ScotRail in disguise?” from the Tartan Army stranded at Cologne’s main station as they experienced delays while trying to reach the stadium for Scotland’s match against Switzerland.
When videos emerged of the chanting, Kevin Lindsay, Scottish organiser for train drivers’ union Aslef, described it as “heartbreaking”.
Having been in the railway for the best part of 40 years, he wants nothing more than for Scotland’s train network to prosper but claims it has “lost its way”.
“It’s heartbreaking,” he told The National.
“ScotRail is an iconic brand, however, people laugh at it now. It has lost its way.
“I want to see Scotland flourish. Unfortunately, unless you invest in your infrastructure that can allow people to move around freely, you’re going to have problems.”
ScotRail was ranked as one of the UK's most reliable train operators earlier this year, with a study indicating just 3.61% of journeys between January 2021 and September 2023 were seriously late or cancelled on average.
But problems, it seems, have been numerous of late with train travel, particularly surrounding big events.
Why are we in this situation?
As a result of a temporary timetable brought in because of an ongoing dispute over pay with Aslef – which has led to drivers refusing to work their days off – there was a significantly reduced service for the TRNSMT festival in Glasgow earlier this month which attracted around 50,000 people to the city centre on each day of the weekend.
Many fans were forced to leave performances early to ensure they made it home, while others had to make alternative transport arrangements.
There were also problems highlighted with capacity during some of the practice days for The Open at Royal Troon, with golf fans having to join enormous queues snaking around Glasgow Central station while hearing that some services were only three carriages long. There was a regular 15-minute service running throughout the championship days, but then that begged the question of why such efforts were made to service that event and not TRNSMT.
With the Edinburgh Fringe on the horizon and people forced to stay well outside of the capital due to lofty accommodation costs, serious concerns around reliability of services are continuing to bubble away.
It might seem like only yesterday there was a back and forth between unions and the now publicly-owned ScotRail over pay, with a similar dispute being resolved last year.
But several unions including Aslef have again recently rejected a proposed three-year pay deal running from this April until 2027 which would have seen workers get a 2% rise each April then a 1% rise the following January.
Kevin Lindsay has said he fully expects drivers to vote in large numbers for strike action when a ballot is launched in the coming weeks, causing more problems for timetables which he says have been cut several times since the pandemic.
It’s not something Lindsay wants to see happen, but he said drivers have reached the end of their tether and are becoming increasingly frustrated they can’t negotiate with ScotRail which he claims is hamstrung by the Government.
He said: “I’m immensely proud we always sit down and negotiate a settlement here in Scotland and the last thing I want is to see strike action. Nobody wins.
“So my message is clear, the Scottish Government need to take the shackles off of ScotRail and allow them to negotiate freely and make a reasonable offer which we can consider and let the train drivers of ScotRail decide whether it’s acceptable.”
When asked why we are in a situation where the railway only functions if drivers work overtime, Lindsay said it’s because it’s “cheaper” as he claimed a “political decision” was made for ScotRail “to be run as cheap as possible”.
He claimed ScotRail are also “notoriously slow” at recruiting and training drivers despite a target to train 160 a year and there are fears many current drivers will leave the company for firms south of the Border, with ScotRail drivers being some of the worst paid in the UK.
The driver problem is not new either. Even though the pandemic did cause a hold-up, there was apparently a shortage prior to the crisis.
The equation is simple from Lindsay's point of view – if you do not invest in the railway and its staff, it just won’t get any better.
“We need to invest in our railways like we invest in education or the NHS. We need to invest in our infrastructure to make the railway more reliable, and we need to have cleaner, greener, better trains. We also need to invest in rail staff and make sure the railway has more people looking after passengers,” Lindsay said.
“We need to educate young people that the railway is something to be cherished, it’s something we need for Scotland to prosper as a nation.”
The climate crisis
Lindsay (below) is also worried about how the situation is going to impact on tourism in Scotland and how it is holding back progress on getting people out of their cars and onto the trains for a greener Scotland.
“We believe if we’re serious about getting people into cars and onto trains, you’ve got to have trains that run [properly]. Having a train that runs once an hour on whatever route, people are not going to wait that length of time.”
It is not just wrangling over pay for workers that is having a knock-on effect on people’s desire to use trains. There are calls for peak tickets to be permanently scrapped, given there are not vast numbers of people travelling during office hours anymore.
There is also confusion over why more effort has not been made to introduce more joined-up ticketing systems for public transport. During COP26 in Glasgow, delegates were able to use a pass to travel on all forms of public transport in the city.
There was also a two-in-one ticket on offer during The Open for fans to use the train and Stagecoach buses.
Laura Young, a climate expert and campaigner based in Dundee, has been questioning why there has not been more joined-up thinking and stressed the need for innovative solutions to solve the public transport quandary.
“Transport if one of the biggest sources of our emissions and you’ve got Scottish Government targets of wanting to reduce car miles by 20%,” she said.
“I remember when that target first came out I thought, does that mean I have to work out how I’m going to cut it by a fifth or are you going to help me out by giving me other options?
“It feels like now we are putting in low emissions zones but not putting in incentives on the other side that helps people out of their cars. Or we’re taking away peak fares and then threatening to put them back on if people don’t use the train.
“We need incentives. We just seem to be bumbling along thinking about what small tweaks we can make when actually we need to incentivise people and we’ve seen radical solutions work through the under-22 bus travel. We’ve seen a change in the way young people travel and that will have a climate impact as well as an economic and social benefit.”
Innovation instead of 'patching up'
Amid an uncertain situation while talks continue, Lindsay said he would like to see an end to a “patching up” attitude.
When it comes to recruiting and training drivers, he claimed ScotRail are only recruiting enough to “stand still” and not enough to drive the railway forward. The whole process to train a driver takes two years and even then, there are limitations for a while on what a new driver can do.
“ScotRail has also got an ageing workforce. I’m 30+years service and that’s not unusual. There is a skills cliff edge coming not only in driving but engineering too,” said Lindsay.
“People are leaving ScotRail but they’re not recruiting enough. They’re recruiting enough to stand still, but never enough to move forward.”
Young (above) – who is studying for a PhD in climate resilience and community engagement – has also been pondering why politicians and economists have not explored further the benefits that have been created by free bus travel for under-22s and over-60s and thought about how something similar could be applied to the railway.
She said: “I remember when the Holyrood climate summit happened last year and there was a panel on transport and I put forward the idea of free public transport, blue sky thinking, and it was just dismissed as if it was ridiculous.
“But I thought we get free healthcare, free prescriptions, free tuition, free buses for under 22s and under 60s. It doesn’t seem a stretch to me to think about it.
“I wonder if any politician or economist is looking at that because people under 22 and over 60 use the buses. Why? Because they’re free. We all pay for it of course, but you just wonder that that isn’t happening with trains so people don’t use them.
“I do think there is a question of how much does it cost to run the trains and what would that look like if it was free and we all have a little tax increase?”
For Lindsay, he is also desperate for more innovative thinking to be brought to the table to give Scotland a green, safe and reliable railway it can be proud of.
“We just need somebody with a lot of railway knowledge to take a grip of this situation and drive it forward to give Scotland the railway it deserves. There is so much we can do if anyone is willing to do it, but unfortunately it’s always piecemeal,” he said.
Mark Ilderton, ScotRail Service Delivery Director, said: “With a 27% increase in passenger use in the last year, ScotRail services are more popular than ever, and we are focussed on enhancing our service delivery.
“ScotRail is committed to recruiting 160 new trainee drivers per year - the highest level ever - and we continue to work on improving our resilience.
“We are focussed on working at the maximum capacity we can to train drivers and this recruitment will help us improve resilience by 2027.
“We want to resolve the pay dispute with trade unions, and we remain fully committed to further discussions.”
A Transport Scotland spokesperson said: "The governance arrangements are cumbersome but that was a consequence of not having the full powers to nationalise ScotRail.
"We would welcome Kevin's support to fully devolve all rail powers to Scotland.
“While train planning and staff rotas are operational matters for ScotRail, we fully expect any timetable to give the best reliability and availability for passengers and that changes are communicated well in advance to enable effective journey planning.
“We acknowledge the desire of rail unions to negotiate a fair settlement for their members. Ministers are being kept informed of progress.
“ScotRail, as a public body and the employer, has responsibility and the ability to negotiate within the limits of public sector pay metrics. However, as rail unions have been made aware, any offer beyond these would require changes to the settlement from UK Government.
“We would encourage rail unions to continue meaningful dialogue with ScotRail."
