Scotrail fail again

So despite the fact that we are supposed to be entering summer the weather has taken a turn for the worse and that means that as always there are issues with public transport.

I am all for the government, or indeed any other organisation, choosing to  encourage the use of public  transport,  It should be more efficient and better, overall for the environment, which should make it all win.  The issue is though that if you want to have people make use of it, then you need to make sure that it is reliable - and quite frankly it is not.

I appreciate that the weather is unseasonably bad, and that this can cause some issues.  However there was a weather warning out and there could have been some preparation which would have meant that they did not need to cancel all the trains out of the station.  Even if they did need to cancel the trains then there should have been some thought as to how they would replace the service.   

Tonight all of the trains were cancelled from about 4pm.  There was no alternative service in place and the Scotrail website stated that the majority of the trains were running,  This it turns out was not the case, and the station was full of pissed passangers with no way to get home.  I was lucky - I had the cash to be able to get a taxi and I only had to wait for an hour in the rain.  There were others for whom that was not possible and they were stuck in town.  About 90% of those people would have already purchased their train tickets - a sum of money which is not insubstantial, they then needed to pay to get home by alternative means, knowing that there was no way of getting a refund.

It is in no way acceptable for people to be left stranded with no other option as to get home while announcing that the services are cancelled and they are sorry for any inconvenience caused.