As she prepares for her new role in academia, Ms Dugdale still brings a little sunshine to the often negative reporting on ScotRail, with this revelation via a parliamentary question:
https://www.parliament.scot/S5ChamberOffice/WA20190507.pdf
As she prepares for her new role in academia, Ms Dugdale still brings a little sunshine to the often negative reporting on ScotRail, with this revelation via a parliamentary question:
https://www.parliament.scot/S5ChamberOffice/WA20190507.pdf
Talking-up Scotland 
Today’s Good Morning Scotland ‘dish-the-dirt-on-Scotrail’ story was the ‘Which?’ Report that Scotrail’s system for reclaiming costs for train delays is amongst the five worst systems in the UK.
The issue is the amount of information to be submitted in support of a claim. Obviously, as a traveller, I want to have money reimbursed asap, and, indeed, some services like Virgin West Coast do this automatically.
However, for Virgin West Coast Services which we use often, because our daughter lives in London, we always buy tickets online and in advance so reimbursement – which is rare, because the service is reliable – is usually done within a day.
When travelling by rail in Scotland, we almost always buy tickets from machines in the station immediately prior to travel. In most cases we are travelling in the Glasgow urban and suburban area, or, less frequently, to Edinburgh or Perth, which means journeys of no more than 90 minutes, but, mostly around half an hour. Given Scotrail’s reliability and punctuality, I cannot recall any time when we would have been eligible for a refund. Occasionally, we will go as far as Aberdeen, Inverness, Kyle of Lochalsh or Mallaig, and we buy in advance online. But again, I cannot recall having to claim a refund.
So, while the system might be cumbersome compared to say, Virgin West Coast or Caledonian Sleepers, the method of ticketing and the punctuality of the service probably requires a bit more data to be supplied, but, the punctuality means that claiming is rare. I have had to buy Virgin tickets on the day at the station, and, in cases where there was a delay, the claim process is more complex.
So, yet again, a decontextualised bad news story.
PS I make more than 200 rail journeys short and long in any year.
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Yesterday’s beeb Scotland website article on ScotRail did carry these 2 further bits of positive info but one really had to read the piece carefully to get beyond the headline and frontloading of the – MISERY – terminology. The news of the 20,000 extra daily train seats might have been most normal folks’ choice of topic for the headline. An alternative headline might have been how the electric trains will reduce air pollution – but not in beeb Scotland’s ‘miserable-ist’ world. Looks like the £1 billion annual contribution of ScotRail to Scotland’s economy is about to get a good bit larger. Snippets below:
The company has announced improvements to schedules it says will add 20,000 seats to journeys every day.
And it added there would be more high-speed and electric trains due to completion of the electrification of the line between Edinburgh and Glasgow.
The new timetable was announced on Wednesday with the claim trains are now able to seat 625,000 passengers each weekday – 115,000 more seats than when it took over the franchise.
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