May 20th - Scotrail's Schedule Shredding
Simon Calder's Independent Travel Podcast
The Independent
3.6 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 20 May 2022
⏱️ 5 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Scotrail is having a terrible time of it, having to slash one-third of trains across the nation from Monday. I look at the reasons why they have to, with a shortage of drivers and a backlog in training new ones and what it means for their service across Scotland.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to the final travel podcast of the week for the Independent with me Simon Calder, |
| 0:08.0 | currently at a beautiful station, one of the finest in Scotland. Queen Street, extravagantly and splendidly refurbished, |
| 0:19.0 | and the main departure point from the largest city in Scotland to the north to the west to the east but I'm afraid the board which I'm just looking up at doesn't look at all happy. Allowa cancelled Cumbernaw cancelled cancelled, and his land cancelled. Scott Rail is currently |
| 0:40.6 | cancelling hundreds of trains every day. They say that the reason is, well basically, they haven't |
| 0:48.8 | got enough drivers. They haven't got enough drivers because of COVID. The drivers they have got |
| 0:54.0 | are not particularly inclined to work on their rest days or Sundays |
| 0:58.9 | because they are in dispute with ScotRail over a range of issues but predominantly pay. |
| 1:08.4 | Therefore, from Monday, rather than the haphazard cancellations that we have been seeing for |
| 1:14.7 | some time in Scotland, I've now left the station before the announcement start up, they are going to be |
| 1:22.4 | canceling 700 trains a day. Yes, that's one third of the total. Some of the cancellations are pretty |
| 1:32.8 | extreme. I discovered that if you're in the beautiful West Highland port of Maleg, |
| 1:38.7 | which serves Sky, and you miss the 603am, the next train for you is going to be at would you believe |
| 1:50.1 | 603 a.m. the following day that's the next direct departure there should normally be direct trains |
| 1:59.5 | four hours and eight hours after that first train, |
| 2:02.9 | but they are being cancelled. |
| 2:05.4 | You can get an evening train to Fort William and change there for the Caledonian sleeper, |
| 2:11.4 | but it's hardly the stuff of keeping a nation together. |
| 2:19.5 | The... the stuff of keeping a nation together. The organisation, Scott Rehl, which was re-nationalised just at the start of April, |
| 2:29.5 | says that this is actually the best way to help travellers to give them plenty of warning. |
| 2:37.1 | But travellers are going to, I think, be rather concerned. |
| 2:41.6 | Many of the other trains are being curtailed, especially in the evening. |
| 2:47.3 | So some last trains from Glasgow to places like Sterling in Dundee are being moved |
... |
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