The latest performance figures published today show that punctuality on Scotland’s railway has reached its highest level since September last year – the third consecutive period of improvement.

Across Scotland, 88.4 per cent of ScotRail trains met the rail industry standard public performance measure, arriving at their destination within 4 minutes and 59 seconds of their timetabled arrival time, having called at all scheduled stations.

This means the moving annual average – the rolling performance over the previous 12 months – stands at 87.3 per cent.

The figures show ScotRail’s punctuality is at its best since September, and the performance for period 11 (January 6 – February 2) has shown a significant improvement on the previous period figure of 84.2 percent.

Investment across Scotland’s Railway and the introduction of the new timetable in December means that customers have access to more services than ever before. Almost 60,000 services operated across the country, which is the largest for a single period since the start of the franchise.

The two incidents that had the most impact on the performance of the ScotRail Alliance – a partnership between Network Rail Scotland and ScotRail – for the period were:

• A signal fault at Glasgow Central.
• A fault with a train near Haymarket.

Significantly, the number of failures for trains arriving on time, caused by incidents outside Scotland are up 45 per cent for the year to date.

ScotRail Alliance Operations Director David Simpson said:

“Everyone at the ScotRail Alliance is working flat out to improve punctuality for our customers, and it is a real positive to see performance continuing to show such significant improvement.

“We know that this continues to be a challenging time, and there are areas where we need to deliver a better service, but things are moving in the right direction.

“The investment we are making in Scotland’s Railway is delivering more services than ever before and we are committed to giving our customers the service they expect and deserve.”