Thousands sign petition to strip Abellio of ScotRail contract
Campaigners delivered the petition, signed by more than 19,000 people, to the transport minister.
More than 19,000 people have signed a petition calling on the Scottish Government to strip ScotRail operators of their contract.
Campaign group 38 Degrees met transport minister Humza Yousaf to deliver the petition and discuss passengers' concerns on Wednesday.
The group says the Scottish Government needs to "get tough" with Dutch firm Abellio, which was awarded the ScotRail franchise in October 2014.
It comes after performance figures published in October showed that on a third of routes in Scotland, ScotRail trains were late more often than they were on time.
The company insists it is making an "incredible amount of effort" to improve punctuality.
The petition calls on Humza Yousaf to "make ScotRail bosses improve Scotland's trains or strip them of their contract".
It adds: "It is vital for Scotland that we have a train service that is affordable and runs on time.
"ScotRail bosses have been providing a poor service for months and the Scottish Government could be finally about to get tough on them."
The group's Scottish head Stewart Kirkpatrick told the BBC: "We've been bombarded with stories from members across Scotland of delays, frustrations, missed appointments, important life events impacted by the poor service offered by ScotRail and they've had enough."
Abellio took over the franchise from First Group, which had run most Scottish train services for the previous ten years.
The contract is due to run for ten years but the Scottish Government holds a provision to cancel it after five years if Abellio fails to meet its obligations.
Yousaf said: "This was a welcome opportunity to meet with passengers who are clearly passionate about Scotland's railways and have some interesting ideas about what can be done to make the system more effective.
"I agreed to take these back to ScotRail with a view to some detailed analysis being carried out on how workable they are and how they could compliment what is already in the pipeline.
The transport minister added addressing concerns over ScotRail's service was his "top priority", saying: "I will be reading ScotRail's improvement plan with great scrutiny.
He added: "It's important to recognise that ScotRail journeys are up by a staggering third compared to 2007, with 95.5 million journeys last year alone.
"We fund the Scottish rail industry very generously compared to the level of investment in England and the latest National Rail Passenger Survey this summer showed that Scotland's railway has a customer satisfaction score of 87%, seven points higher than the UK average.
"We know there is room for improvement, but there are decent foundations in place."
Scottish Labour transport spokesman Neil Bibby said: "This petition should serve as a wake-up call to the SNP government. Scotland's rail passengers are fed up with the poor service they are receiving.
"A third of all routes in Scotland have services that are late more often than they are on time while the Scottish Government's cap on rush-hour fares has increased by over 23% since 2011, and Abellio is raking in a £1m-a-month profit from the franchise.
"The Scottish Government received an improvement plan from ScotRail in September but services are still unacceptable.
"It is time for Humza Yousaf to explain to passengers what improvements he is going to make and when these improvements will take place."
ScotRail Alliance managing director Phil Verster insisted he wanted the company to "be in a better place with train punctuality" and it would "absolutely not" reach the point where the company lost the contract.
Mr Verster said on the BBC Radio Scotland's Good Morning Scotland programme: "I definitely want us to be in a better place with train punctuality performance.
"We're around 0.7% off where we want to be and we are putting an incredible amount of effort to recover that performance because we know how important that is."
He said a "massive increase" in people using the trains resulted in capacity issues which has "contributed more and more to trains running slower".
Mr Verster added: "Our customers are going to be significantly impressed with our transformation in the next couple of years."