ScotRail train at Glasgow Central Station. Photo Workers.
Not to be outdone by the headlong rush across Britain to cut back rail services, Scotland has joined the fray announcing proposals to permanently slash its train services.
Publishing a consultation document on 20 August, ScotRail operator Abellio (Dutch national railways) claims that before Covid-19 there were “significantly” more seats provided on trains than were required, “Under five and a half million passenger journey miles were completed on a typical weekday, which was just 23 per cent of the available number of seats. In other words, seats were empty for 77 per cent of the distance that was travelled,” it says.
It then claimed that returning to the pre-pandemic timetable would increase emissions, ignoring the probable much greater level of emissions from more cars on the road should it go ahead with its proposal to cut 300 of the 2,400 services that existed before Covid-19.
Unions are calling on the SNP-controlled Scottish devolved administration to ensure the proposals do not see the light of day. But Abellio hands ScotRail back to Holyrood to run directly in the public sector next year, and the administration is as committed to attacking rail workers and their trade unions as Westminster.
Meanwhile, ScotRail’s current owner Abellio confidently predicts not only a return to previous passenger levels in the Netherlands but is planning for expansion. Exploiting the retrenchment of the airlines and the swing in popularity away from air travel, huge sums are now being invested across Europe in new overnight trains, putting back in place international sleeper services that have dwindled over the past decade.
• A longer version of this article is on the web at www.cpbml.org.uk