Government plans to nip mere minutes off rail journey times between the north and north-east and London were dismissed as “a joke” last night.
Transport Secretary Lord Adonis announced new state-owned East Coast will cut 11 minutes off the timetable between Edinburgh and London on the east coast mainline.
But difficulties with Scot-Rail’s operations north of the border will reduce this to between just six and 10 minutes travelling south from Aberdeen to Edinburgh and just two on the long run north.
The saving on the single service to and from Inverness will also amount to just two minutes in either direction.
The sole substantial improvement will be an additional express to run from Dundee at 08.20 and arriving at King’s Cross at 12.50.
Angus SNP MP Mike Weir said: “This is a joke. You could not make it up. This is Labour’s new transport system. Two minutes off a journey from London to Aberdeen will hardly leave the airlines quaking in their boots at a possible loss of travellers.
“There needs to be much faster progress building a high-speed line from London not just to northern England but all the way to Aberdeen.” And Aberdeen Chamber of Commerce chief executive Bob Collier said that “shaving a few minutes off the Edinburgh-London route is neither here nor there as far as the north-east business community is concerned.”
He added: “What we are really looking for are substantial cuts to the journey times between Aberdeen to Edinburgh and Glasgow and we would like to see government address that issue with some urgency.”
Lord Adonis promised in a widely-heralded statement there would be “a new extra-speedy Flying Scotsman-style London-Edinburgh service taking less than four hours” within two years and claimed he was particularly keen to cut journey times between major Scottish cities and London.
He said: “This new timetable is a big improvement for passengers.”
But his officials revealed it had been impossible to get ScotRail’s timetables altered to accommodate faster services to the north and north-east.
A spokesman said the reason for losing the savings made between London and Edinburgh was “additional station dwell time at Edinburgh so that current train paths within Scotland can be used to avoid large-scale re-timing of ScotRail services.”
He said the Inverness saving was also limited “to avoid complete re-timing of the Highland main line”.
Gordon Lib Dem MP Malcolm Bruce said it was “absurd” savings between Edinburgh and London were not being passed on to travellers to and from the north and north-east.
Aberdeen North Labour MP Frank Doran said the hold-up was “symptomatic of neglect of the line from Edinburgh to Aberdeen under successive governments for at least the last 40 years.
However, he also made clear his view that any opportunities to pass on journey time savings further south “must be taken”.