Passengers in Dumbarton and Alexandria are being ‘let down’ by Scotrail it has been claimed, as new figures revealed that more than 6000 scheduled trains have been cancelled over the last two years.
Dumbarton MSP Jackie Baillie hit out at the rail operator - which was taken into Scottish Government hands earlier this year - after a Freedom of Information request revealed the scale of the issues with trains locally.
The new figures equate to an average of 250 services being cancelled each month across the area.
Most of the cancellations (887) were classified as being down to ‘drivers’ while the second highest reason for cancellations (502) was points failures.
In a response earlier this year to Jackie Baillie, Scotrail advised that they were facing difficulties filling driver vacancies within the area - with the MSP asking them to embark on a recruitment campaign to boost numbers and improve the reliability of services.
Passengers have been impacted by strike action this year and are set to face more disruption with RMT members taking part in several dates of strike in the lead-up to Christmas and the early part of next year.
The Labour member said: “My constituents across Dumbarton, Balloch and Helensburgh are completely fed up with the poor rail service they have endured over the years and this is a problem which has been going on long before the pandemic.
“I have written countless letters to Scotrail over a number of years because of the problems encountered on the lines passing through Dumbarton and Helensburgh.
“Long suffering passengers have endured station skipping, crammed carriages and short-notice cancellations and continue to be let down with almost 6000 cancellations in the last two years alone.
“I understand that some technical issues may be beyond the control of Scotrail, but I asked them to look at taking action to recruit more drivers earlier this year and disappointingly I have seen no evidence of a robust recruitment campaign since.
“I understand that rail services have been impacted because of Covid and I understand that the workforce would have been depleted at this time but so too were the number of people travelling.
“There has now been a greater return to work and, in turn, to the railways and that needs to be matched with a reliable service from ScotRail and its owners the Scottish Government. The staff work very hard and deserve the government’s support.
“This is a sustainable form of transport which we must encourage people to use. West Dunbartonshire and Helensburgh are well served with railway stations but there need to be trains running to those stations to make this work. Those trains need to be there when they are expected to be otherwise people won’t make use of them.
“We all want to see an improving service, affordable fares and a recruitment campaign to get people into jobs and get passengers moving.”
A spokesman for Scotrail said that the pandemic and industrial action had led to difficult decisions being made on what services to run, and that supporting the efforts of key workers on the busiest routes was a priority.
Phil Campbell, Scotrail’s head of Customer Operations, added: “Everyone across Scotland’s Railway works tirelessly to deliver a safe, reliable, and robust service for our customers.
“We understand and share the frustration of our customers when things do not go to plan, so we’ll continue to work flat out to deliver the service they expect and deserve.
“We’re still very much in a period of recovery from the pandemic, and it continues to have an impact on the services we’re able to deliver.
“Our customers have also been impacted by widespread disruption across the whole of the Great Britain rail network caused by strike action, which has been particularly frustrating as Scotrail staff have not been involved in the vast majority of these strikes.”
