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Abellio Scotrail Franchise to end early in March 2022

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Deltic1961

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I wonder what percentage of the HSTs actually complete their diagram on any given day.

One of the Edinburgh to Inverness ones was replaced with a 2 carriage train at lunchtime today.
 
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Highland37

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It's an excellent question and one which appears to be very hard to answer. At a guess, 75%?

That doesn't allow for the issue of the HST not actually starting its diagram.
 

Scotrail314209

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All these HST cases really seem like we should've gotten new build stock.

Maybe an 80x or a FLIRT would do the trick. The HSTs just seem to be really unreliable.
 

snookertam

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A (singular) ticket machine at many Glasgow suburban stations simply doesn't cut it at busy times, even two machines are not great at certain stations. Around five are needed, unless you are expecting people to add on about 10 minutes to their journey each morning, which lets face it is not realistic. The train is about getting from A to B, it shouldn't be an event you need to plan for.

Many passengers are now using smartcards and for season tickets they are quite useful - also useful was the smart plus scheme that was trialled on the Cathcart Circle and operating in the same way as the subway smart cards. Passengers topped up by adding money in advance, tapping in and out and then having the correct, cheapest, fare deducted at the end of the day or week. Whether such a scheme could be rolled out more widely than a self contained route is unclear, but it certainly was a great improvement at the time and would likely encourage semi regular passengers to puchase in advance.
 

Deltic1961

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We have 2 machines at Dyce, one on each platform. It's a busy commuter station and platform 2 is the busiest heading for Aberdeen.

It takes ages for the queue to go down, and part of the reason is that the software on the machines is clunky and unintuitive.

I worked out it takes an average of 2 minutes per ticket sale for one person and longer for groups and arguing couples.

One machine is simply not enough unless people turn up long before the train is due.

The new footbridge is not close to the machines either so it's a fair distance to get to the machine on the other platform and back again.
 

HH

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All these HST cases really seem like we should've gotten new build stock.

Maybe an 80x or a FLIRT would do the trick. The HSTs just seem to be really unreliable.
Money, money, money. A new fleet just to cover the HST services would have cost a lot more and theoretically have taken a lot longer to deliver. But I bet now everybody wishes they had bitten the bullet...
 

cf111

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A (singular) ticket machine at many Glasgow suburban stations simply doesn't cut it at busy times, even two machines are not great at certain stations. Around five are needed, unless you are expecting people to add on about 10 minutes to their journey each morning, which lets face it is not realistic. The train is about getting from A to B, it shouldn't be an event you need to plan for.

Many passengers are now using smartcards and for season tickets they are quite useful - also useful was the smart plus scheme that was trialled on the Cathcart Circle and operating in the same way as the subway smart cards. Passengers topped up by adding money in advance, tapping in and out and then having the correct, cheapest, fare deducted at the end of the day or week. Whether such a scheme could be rolled out more widely than a self contained route is unclear, but it certainly was a great improvement at the time and would likely encourage semi regular passengers to puchase in advance.
There are only two at Inverness now when there used to be four. Things would be much better even if they only provided more of the card only ones, or brought back the collection only machine.
 

Highland37

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Yes good point. Abellio are rightly not getting the extension due to their poor performance. In addition to getting rid of ticket machines, they have also scrapped their bike and go scheme, which to be fair, was useless anyway.
 

jagardner1984

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A smartcard is essentially just a piece of plastic with an RFID chip in it. A contactless Debit card is essentially just a piece of plastic with an RFID chip in it.

With very few exceptions, majority of journeys on the Scotrail network are under the £30 contactless limit. So why can’t you simply tap in and out using your card, and the correct cheapest fare applied. Associate your railcard or other card with it online. Automatically credit delay repay to it. Presumably some simple method where a traveller boards a train to Inverness say with a higher fare, for the guards machine to “tap them out” with a £0 charge and buy a long distance ticket.

A ticket or smartcard is only a method of associating a product with a traveller.

London have been doing this for years without issue, presumably if you travel somewhere and don’t tap out a standard (penalty?) fare is applied. Presumably if you don’t tap in a standard (penalty ?) fare is applied.

In an age of apparent environmental awareness, ticket machines spooling dozens of pointless non recyclable tickets every few minutes for a series of £1.50 journeys, complete with return portions (why ?), card receipts etc. I am astonished This isn’t a bigger story.

Abellio’s risible attempts at smart ticketing (a target of 60% by April 2019 was missed spectacularly) are one of their less talked about failings.

Ticket machines should be removed, but only once a proper, sleeker, fully implemented smart system is rolled out. The number of Scotrail guards who simply wave my smartcard away because the machine isn’t working is astonishing.

And don’t get me started on the seperate, abysmal system of Subway ticketing and the integration of the two systems.

Quite why all these businesses feel the need to fill my pockets with needless bits of landfill when the technology all exists to rationalise and simplify this is beyond me.

One simple way of redressing some of the London/rUK transport divide would be simply to Use the very effective ticketing system they have nationwide, and reduce systems/development costs all over the country. Tap in with my Oyster or Debit Card in leafy Surrey, use it on Southern, LU, Avanti, Scotrail and Glasgow Subway, on one pre-loaded or instantly redeemed ticket. Sold and manageable by App, Ticket Machine or Guard.

Like you know, a modern integrated transport system. What a thought ....!
 

Energy

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Quite why all these businesses feel the need to fill my pockets with needless bits of landfill when the technology all exists to rationalise and simplify this is beyond me.
I agree, it does seem a little stupid lots of operators use their own smart card. Govia are rather good as they have 1 smart card for everything they own but some aren't great, for example GWR and TPE are both wholly owned by First but they both have different cards. Back onto the subject of Scotrail, atleast there is only one card for all of Scotland.
 

InOban

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This integration of ticketing is only possible in London because of TfL. Andy Burnham was complaining on the radio that it is not possible anywhere else in the UK. So not Abellio's fault, like many other things they get blamed for.
 

haggishunter

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This integration of ticketing is only possible in London because of TfL. Andy Burnham was complaining on the radio that it is not possible anywhere else in the UK. So not Abellio's fault, like many other things they get blamed for.

Actually many of the faults pointed out in this thread are Abellio’s fault because they apply solely within the ScotRail network.

If there was an integrated oyster-esq system covering the SPT area ScotRail services and Subway it would become an economic imperative for the bus companies to cooperate or lose out to rail as far as people can do their journeys on rail.

The roundabout and zone card tickets need to be put on smart card ASAP and since the ScotRail app can update smart cards instant ticket purchases should be possible (indeed the app should be able to function as a virtual smart card).
 

HH

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Smartcard problems are largely the fault of DfT (and IIRC their predecessors) with their religious insistence on a standard that has never delivered in 15 years of trying. As I think I’ve said before, back in 2005 I was speaking with TfL about working together on extending the use of Oyster, only to be told that this was not acceptable.

The whole point of ITSO was supposed to be common usage, but it just doesn’t seem to work. At the very least DfT should have stepped in and insisted that RDG develop a one card system supported by RSP. But RDG and the owning groups are hardly innocent here either.
 

jagardner1984

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But again - all these are numbers associated with an rfid chip. So there is nothing to stop DFT creating a single product “National Travelcard” and then migrating the databases into one location, and allowing users to merge their cards together.

the insanity of Scotrail allowing some SPT products to be loaded onto their smartcards; and visa versa, is surely not lost on people.

whatever is done, there should really be an emphasis on it not involving a massive further production of more plastic.
 

awsnews

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Actually many of the faults pointed out in this thread are Abellio’s fault because they apply solely within the ScotRail network.

If there was an integrated oyster-esq system covering the SPT area ScotRail services and Subway it would become an economic imperative for the bus companies to cooperate or lose out to rail as far as people can do their journeys on rail.

The roundabout and zone card tickets need to be put on smart card ASAP and since the ScotRail app can update smart cards instant ticket purchases should be possible (indeed the app should be able to function as a virtual smart card).
Given that the Scotrail smartcards are provided by Nevis Technologies which is part owned by SPT you would expect it to be a given, particularly as they are also involved in the 'Tripper' tickets for the buses.
 

scotrail158713

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In an age of apparent environmental awareness, ticket machines spooling dozens of pointless non recyclable tickets every few minutes for a series of £1.50 journeys, complete with return portions (why ?), card receipts etc. I am astonished This isn’t a bigger story.
Are those wee orange tickets genuinely non-recyclable? Like you I’m also astonished a bigger deal isn’t made of that. I’ve been (I suppose pointlessly) putting them in my recycling bin for years.
I suppose it’s probably not beneficial for Scotrail, in this day and age, to publicise that their paper-like tickets are in fact non-recyclable.
 

HH

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Actually they are recyclable, so we can at least dispense with unnecessary outrage on that point.
 

jagardner1984

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Mmmm. I sent the environmental team in Glasgow a message with a photo of mine and they said the magnetic strip made it a composite material and therefore shouldn’t be recycled with Normal paper etc. (Similar to Tetrapacks which Glasgow don’t recycle via kerbside collections but which you can take to the Household Recycling Centres)

Given the first two parts of that mantra are Reduce and Reuse, do they really need to produce a card receipt by default ? Do they really need to produce the Out and Return on seperate tickets ? Can they really not think of a carnet product which makes that single ticket cheaper and used 10 times ?

I think the point regarding these tickets very much stands. Ticketing for public transport is farcically disjointed and wasteful.
 

snookertam

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Completely agree with the ticketing complaints which, as some have pointed out, actually aren't entirely down to Abellio themselves. However I would have thought Transport Scotland might have been able to do more about it?

There are occasional grumbles about Glasgow's transport network and how it could (and should be improved). By UK standards it is excellent although by European standards (which lets face it, is how most here judge things) it isn't so good. I actually believe that a joint ticketing system similar to oyster operating within the city limits would improve public transport usage a great deal, before we even look into improving freqencies or extending routes.

I'm not sure I buy this theory that the DfT are preventing all efforts here. Surely in Scotland we can produce something involving the national rail franchise and other transport operators here, even if it sits entirely outwith the standard UK railway ticketing regime. Is it really beyond our ken here to have a system where off peak you pay, say £2.50 and get unlimited travel by any transport mode for the next two hours? A daily limit of say £5, or a weekly limit of £20 (for talking sake?). We already have zonecards which can be used for more complex and longer distance journeys in the west of Scotland, so it has been done before - what is needed now is something that can be used across the board which would encourage more to public transport and remove the percieved hassle of travel by multiple modes. There was a recent peice of legislation through the Scottish Parliament which introduced the ability for local authorities to regulate bus services to a certain degree, so the will is there for a more co-ordinated effort.
 

snookertam

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This integration of ticketing is only possible in London because of TfL. Andy Burnham was complaining on the radio that it is not possible anywhere else in the UK. So not Abellio's fault, like many other things they get blamed for.

I'm not sure I agree with Andy Burnham here. How he would know whether it was possible in Glasgow or not is beyond me slightly. We already have zonecards in the Glasgow area which are a (albeit primative) form of through ticketing. He's either mistaken or covering up for his own failings.
 

HH

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I'm not sure I buy this theory that the DfT are preventing all efforts here.

I don’t know how you misunderstood so much. DfT are not preventing efforts, it’s simply that their longstanding policy has directed efforts and these efforts have not delivered. Last I knew, TS were aligned with DfT on the matter, so it’s absolutely not DfT vs the world!
 

HH

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Deltic1961

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Something in the way railways are delivered is seriously wrong if a company with Scotrail's ticket prices and passenger numbers can lose money.
 

lordbusiness

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A good illustration to dispel the widely held belief outside the industry that the TOCs are making huge amounts of profit. There is a fine line between profit and loss in the TOC world and it only takes a few hiccups to put you in the red.
 

InOban

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Something in the way railways are delivered is seriously wrong if a company with Scotrail's ticket prices and passenger numbers can lose money.
On the contrary. The regulations, T&C's, training requirements, track access charges, etc etc,, make it.impossible to make a profit unless you are operating trains of at least 6 coaches, preferably 8.
For example, Edinburgh recently introduced extra long 3-axle double decker buses which seat 100. They don't pay anything for the extra road space, the drivers get paid a lot less than train drivers, and have a shorter training course, work 7days, don't get 3weeks to learn a new bus or a new route. Our super-safe railway costs.
And Holyrood has kept fare increases lower than in the rest of the UK.
 

jagardner1984

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Ironically in some ways Scotrail has been the victim of its own success, in that broadly speaking, 6 car trains on the E&G have become 8 car. There has been a speed increase. Many 3 car Inverness Aberdeen services are now 4/5 car. Hundreds more staff have been recruited and trained. Stations lengthened, stock refurbished.

Of course there have been huge issues, and their management of those has at times been appalling, but to put them in a general category, growing pains is what Scotrail have suffered from most, and the railway they do deliver is unrecognisable from that at the start of privatisation in 1997. It will be interesting to see what the next operator offers.
 

47271

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Abellio lost £10m on Scotrail last year so maybe happy not to have an extension

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-50891974
I'm interested in one quote from this piece because the figure crops up quite frequently as part of the discussion of Abellio's failure to operate Scotrail profitably.

He said the company had invested more than £475m in new and upgraded trains and created more than 500 extra jobs in Scotland.

Have they really spent £475m of Abellio's money or have they spent £475m of public money? If it's the latter then it's time someone calls them out on the statement.

Separately, if anyone's interested, there's another long boring piece in The Herald today alleging that public subsidy had already increased to Abellio, but the bubble is quickly burst on this since it appears the extra amounts reflect increased Network Rail access charges that everyone knew were on their way once EGIP was up and running.

https://www.heraldscotland.com/news...ecord-482-8m-taxpayer-payout---record-losses/
 
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