Almost half of trains arrive late at north east stations, shocking new figures have revealed.
The startling extent of delays to crucial rail services in the region are laid bare by official statistics for the year to the end of April.
Only 50% of trains arrived at Dyce station on time, in Inverurie the figure was 50.4% and in Stonehaven it was 53.8%.
At Aberdeen’s busy station, three in every ten trains was officially late.
Transport Scotland said “robust efforts” had been made by the service operator to improve its poor punctuality record.
But community leaders and politicians sad the performance was “completely unacceptable” and demanded more action from transport chiefs.
Transport Scotland and ScotRail class a train arriving ‘on time’ as one that arrives within a minute of the scheduled arrival time.
North east MSP Lewis Macdonald said he would raise the issue directly with Scottish government ministers at Holyrood.
“It is a very poor level of service and a very poor level of performance,” he said.
“But I’m sorry to say I’m not surprised by the number because of my own experience of travelling by train in recent weeks.
“When I went down to cheer on Aberdeen in the Scottish Cup final last month, I travelled down on the Friday evening before the match and the train I was due to catch was simply cancelled and trains being either late or cancelled seems to be too regular an occurrence.
“I’m planning to ask some questions in the Scottish Parliament about some of the services which seem to me to be more often late than on time.”
Another method used by train bosses to monitor lateness is the Public Performance Measure (PPM) based on whether trains arrive within five minutes of the scheduled time.
These numbers are higher: at Dyce 88.3% arrive within the PPM timescale, at Inverurie 87%, 85.3% in Stonehaven and 86.8% at Aberdeen.
A Transport Scotland spokeswoman said: “It has been well documented already that ScotRail’s performance was not where it should have been, including on these routes.
“Transport Scotland took action to ensure this was addressed quickly.
“Abellio ScotRail’s robust efforts to improve performance are evidence of this.
“Performance has improved over the last seven consecutive periods, bringing passengers closer to the rail service they both deserve and desire.”
A ScotRail Alliance spokesman said the blame sometimes lay with problems elsewhere.
He said: “We use our entire fleet across our network, hence delays in the north east can be caused by issues a considerable distance away.
“For example, Caledonian Sleeper or Virgin Trains services that have been affected by delays in Greater London can easily have a knock-on effect to the punctuality of our services, due to them sharing the same tracks for the final part of their journey.
“We run 2,300 services every weekday – resulting in around 94 million passenger journeys a year – and on rare occasions some things go wrong.
“We recognise these occasions are frustrating for our customers caught up in them and every effort is made to keep them moving so that they can complete their journey.”
On the PPM figures Mr Macdonald added: “If you are going to work or if you have an appointment five minutes can make all the difference between being late and on time.
“These numbers are still telling you that one in seven or one in eight trains isn’t even within five minutes.
“It’s bad enough that trains are five minutes late but that other percentage that is more than five minutes late is completely unacceptable.”
Fiona Peebles, the vice chair of Inverurie Community Council, added: “We would like to see the best possible train service from Inverurie and the current figures are very disappointing so something needs to change.”
The chair of Stonehaven and District Community Council, Phil Mills-Bishop, echoed these sentiments.
He said: “I know we are not as bad as some other stations but these figures are not at all good for Stonehaven and I’m very unhappy about this as I’m sure are the other affected communities.”
