Rail bosses have paid out £2,000 a day in compensation to embittered passengers, new figures show.
Nearly £600,000 was handed to ScotRail customers between April and December last year as train services were mired by cancellations, delays and over-crowding.
Most of those payments – £340,000 – were for delays, while £52,000 was dished out as “gestures of goodwill”.
Liam Kerr, the transport spokesman for the Scottish Conservatives, which obtained the figures, said: “The rising cost of compensation appears to reflect the nosedive in quality and reliability experienced by passengers on Scotland’s trains.
“It’s no surprise the bill has surpassed £500,000 for the last nine months when you consider the problems on our railways.
He added: “As well as passengers, you have to feel for the staff who are doing their best with no help from the Scottish Government, and they will be wondering how transport minister Humza Yousaf ever allowed it to get this bad.”
Mr Yousaf has been under pressure over the performance of ScotRail in recent months.
In November and December, less than 84% of services arrived at stations within five minutes of their scheduled time. That performance has improved in recent months, but the 91.6% recorded for the month to February 4 is still below the target.
The compensation figures, which were obtained through freedom of information laws, show there were 1,963 people in April who claimed a total of £24,244.
In December – seen as the height of the crisis – that figure shot up to 9,224 securing £94,878 in compensation.
A ScotRail Alliance spokesman stressed the importance of the “delay repay” scheme for compensating passengers, adding: “Our performance improvement plan is all about making our service punctual and reliable.
“We will continue to encourage passengers who’ve been delayed to claim back the portion of their ticket price that is rightfully theirs and have made the claiming process simple and speedy,” the spokesman said.
“Due to the ongoing investment and improvement of the railway network across the country, there have been more delays than normal and we’re compensating customers as a result.”
A Scottish Government spokeswoman said they introduced the delay repay model.
She added: “We acknowledge that there have been issues in respect of ScotRail’s performance which has fallen below the standards required by the franchise contract.
“However, ScotRail has developed and implemented a performance improvement plan and we are encouraged to see that performance in this period is significantly better than the last, and above the same period last year.
