Scotsman Bulletin Friday 3 November

The Scotsman

03/11/2023

Transcript

00:00 (upbeat music)

00:02 - Hello, welcome to the Scotsman's Daily Video Bulletin

00:08 for Friday, the 3rd of November.

00:11 We're approaching Christmas time

00:13 and I'm joined by our transport correspondent,

00:17 Alistair Dalton.

00:19 Alistair, before we get to the travel chaos

00:22 that impacted all those going through

00:24 Edinburgh Waverley Station last night,

00:26 I just want to reference the front page of the Scotsman.

00:29 We led on the latest with Nicola Sturgeon.

00:33 There was a confirmation from the UK COVID inquiry

00:36 that there was no reason, legal or otherwise,

00:39 that Nicola couldn't confirm

00:43 whether she had deleted her WhatsApp messages.

00:46 Her spokesperson reissued a statement last night

00:50 that said again that she was cooperating fully

00:52 with the inquiry.

00:54 There was still no clarification though

00:56 around whether a deletion of messages did take place or not.

01:00 We've seen Kate Forbes, the former finance secretary,

01:04 be quite upfront about her position.

01:05 We've heard Humza clarify his position

01:08 over the past week as well.

01:10 So there is increasing pressure on Nicola Sturgeon

01:14 to confirm what she did with these messages.

01:17 We also haven't heard from Jason Leitch over the past week.

01:21 He was the one that really got the ball rolling

01:23 with early reports that he had deleted messages daily

01:27 were the initial reports.

01:29 And certainly that was wound back.

01:30 We also had an exclusive on the Edinburgh Film House,

01:34 Ferguson, that it had received a boost

01:38 of about 300,000 pounds,

01:40 which will go a long way to helping it reopen

01:42 for next year.

01:44 Fingers crossed that comes together.

01:46 Alistair, you and I were in a fairly unusual situation

01:50 yesterday.

01:51 It's not as though we haven't all experienced trains

01:54 being cancelled or delayed.

01:56 But last night, basically all trains going in and out

02:01 of Edinburgh Waverley were cancelled

02:02 from just before 5 p.m.

02:04 until basically the last trains usually run.

02:07 We were called up and then can you talk me through

02:09 from you arriving at the station

02:12 and just what you learned from there?

02:14 - Yeah, so as you say, Dale,

02:17 I was at Waverley shortly after five o'clock,

02:20 which was just after the incident happened.

02:23 There were hundreds of people

02:25 and pretty much every train was marked

02:28 either delayed or cancelled.

02:30 And Network Rail, which runs the infrastructure,

02:33 they say that this was caused by a power surge,

02:37 which led to the signals being unable to work.

02:40 And in fact, Network Rail have told me this morning,

02:43 the scale of the surge was such

02:45 that it effectively fried everything in the system.

02:49 Just all the backup systems,

02:50 some of which were only installed and tested last week,

02:53 were just not able to cope with that.

02:55 It looks like every train was cancelled,

02:58 as you mentioned from then on.

03:00 ScotRail saying alone,

03:02 they had around 300 trains cancelled,

03:05 but there were six other operators which used the station,

03:09 which were also badly affected

03:11 and trains coming towards Edinburgh

03:13 were effectively turned around

03:14 and sent in the other direction.

03:18 From my experience, there was information

03:20 on the indicator boards about what was happening,

03:25 but I think there wasn't a clear consistent messaging

03:29 over the public address system about the likely timescales.

03:34 And I thought it was unusual that,

03:36 although many of passengers would have been following

03:40 social media feeds from the rail operator

03:43 to see what was happening,

03:45 at about 6.15, Network Rail tweeted

03:47 that an engineer had been dispatched

03:50 and was expected to arrive at the location at 7 o'clock.

03:53 And I don't recall that being communicated

03:56 to people on the platform,

03:58 although there were many staff from many train companies

04:01 who perhaps would have passed that information.

04:03 That may have, would have helped people decide,

04:06 rather than hang on to make alternative arrangements,

04:08 perhaps get a bus or taxi instead.

04:11 And there were a variety of announcements,

04:15 some are automated about individual cancellations,

04:18 some about the overall situation,

04:20 some were clear, some were very difficult to hear.

04:23 So even though there was a major incident

04:25 at Edinburgh Waverley during the festival in 2019

04:28 with a huge number, many more people affected,

04:31 there doesn't appear to be fully lessons learned

04:36 about how to deal with something like this.

04:39 - Alistair, I know just walking along Princess Street,

04:43 I mean, I made the quick decision,

04:45 but as you say, I saw a lot of people standing around

04:48 looking for information, almost looking for direction.

04:50 I made the early call to go and catch a bus home

04:53 and Princess Street was as busy as you would see it

04:56 in terms of people waiting at stops to try and get home.

04:59 My bus was full heading home,

05:02 but the communication about whether the power

05:04 would be restored before that sort of 11 p.m. time

05:08 seemed mixed.

05:09 The one thing that was communicated though,

05:12 late in the evening was for passengers impacted

05:15 to keep hotel and taxi receipts.

05:18 Can you talk me through that because that seems unusual?

05:22 - Yeah, so there's a system called delay repay

05:26 that if your train is more than 30 minutes late

05:28 or canceled, you can claim a refund.

05:31 And there's quite an efficient online system

05:33 you can do that.

05:35 But in this case, clearly there were many cancellations

05:38 and it went well beyond that.

05:40 There was an element of replacement buses put on,

05:43 but it was very limited.

05:44 And yes, it was really quite late in the evening

05:46 that Scott Rowe were tweeting about people being able

05:49 to get refunds for taxis, for even hotels.

05:53 And I'm told people on social media talking

05:55 about hotel prices in Edinburgh skyrocketing last night,

05:59 which is perhaps unsurprising.

06:01 But some people perhaps would have taken a taxi,

06:04 maybe spent as much as 150 pounds traveling

06:06 through to Glasgow and not thought they could claim

06:09 and perhaps not getting a receipt.

06:11 So yes, that perhaps should have made clear,

06:14 but perhaps in Scott Rail's and Network Rail's defense,

06:19 they may not have known the scale of the problem

06:22 or how, or hoping perhaps it was gonna be fixable

06:26 much earlier because all the trains were sitting

06:28 in the station and I'm guessing as soon as the problem

06:31 was fixed, they could start perhaps moving.

06:34 So it was a difficult situation, but yeah,

06:36 perhaps something that should have been communicated earlier.

06:39 - And Alistair, just to finish up, key takeaways,

06:42 what do you think the lessons to be learned were maybe

06:45 from this, there seemed only a couple of replacement buses

06:50 that were put on late last night.

06:52 I noticed some criticism in and around that as well.

06:54 - Yeah, well, since the pandemic,

06:57 there has been a shortage of that sort of thing.

07:01 There's been problems with drivers that's affected

07:04 the whole bus industry.

07:06 I don't know the exact situation,

07:09 but I think there's less available.

07:11 And I imagine that it's the sheer scale of the incident

07:15 could cause problems maybe at that particular time of day,

07:18 it was very busy, a lot of buses and coaches

07:21 already in service.

07:22 But I suspect that both Scott Rail and Network Rail

07:26 and the other operators will be revisiting what they learned

07:29 from this major disruption I mentioned in August, 2019,

07:35 which were probably thousands of people in the station

07:40 unable to get home and have another look at where things

07:45 could be improved, particularly on improving communication

07:48 and telling people what their options are,

07:50 rather than just say they should think about making

07:53 their own travel arrangements, which isn't terribly helpful.

07:56 - You can read how things panned out throughout the night

08:00 on our live blog, it's at scotsman.com.

08:04 There'll be updates about compensation, et cetera,

08:07 throughout today, as Alistair has advised,

08:10 if you kept receipts, please dig them out,

08:12 because if you were one of the passengers impacted,

08:15 you'll need that down the track.

08:17 You can also read a piece just wrapping in

08:22 the wider implications of this from Alistair on the site.

08:25 I just head towards the navigation bar

08:27 and the transport tab later today.

08:30 Please follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

08:34 We'll deliver you all the fallout from this,

08:36 as well as the latest from Gaza and details

08:39 of the latest Scottish independence paper are out today.

08:43 Thanks very much for joining us.

08:44 (upbeat music)

08:47 (upbeat music)

08:50 [Music]

Scotsman Bulletin Friday 3 November

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