Is it costing money though or do the reduced bills for wages and running costs exceed the farebox take?
ASLEF inaction by its members in the coming weeks, and service reductions, will reduce the subsidy from the Scot Gov into ScotRail, which bleeds money every hour of the day. In the future every service that it does not run will save money & if it gets to a point where train staff go on strike the savings will probably be even greater. If RMT members strike but drivers still work it will concentrate on running a very limited service frequency on its busy routes [E&G plus GLC-Ayrshire & Lanark]. ASLEF members striking will result in no services running.
Since nationalisation the Scot Gov has slowly realised that it cannot afford to run the current network and the 2200+ services per day. It has continued to blindly pump in money, as it has mistakenly done with other transport projects, mainly hoping that there would be a switch from road to ScotRail to help deliver its over optimistic 2035 de-carbonisation targets [which have now been dropped].
The fixed costs which it has to pay for the rail package of network, rolling stock and staff is inefficient and inflexible and the 3% pay rise for the next 3 years will not fit with the need for massive cuts to reduce the overall rail subsidy.
BUDGET £M 2023-24 2024-25
Enhancement Projects 155.8 146.9
Rail Services 1,083.1 965.7
Network Infrastructure 442.0 488.4
Total Rail Services 1,680.9 1,601.0
Running old, unreliable stock plus various TT changes will not help attract new users and ScR annual usage sits around 2/3 of its pre-Covid usage levels of c. 100M passengers pa. As usual the hard decisions around closing stations, ticket offices, staff redundancies, job duplication and conductor replacements have been avoided by the SNP government and the budget will come under massive pressure in the coming years if revenue does not grow. Even the flagship peak fares removal "trial" has been a damp squib and has only seen the cash support requirements increase.
SCOTTISH GOVERNMENT FOI response -
Analysis was undertaken as part of part of the preparations for the SG Budget 23-24 on the budget implications of removing ScotRail peak fares from the rail network. The decision to undertake a 6 month pilot scheme in 23-24, linked to the Fair Fares Review, was announced as part of the budget process with an estimated additional budget requirement of £15m...... point estimate of £21.8m as the revenue loss from removal of peak fares (before refunds). When the revenue from additional demand (£6.6m) and refunds are taken into account, £15.4 m is the point estimate of the likely level of costs in this scenario.
