Meeting of the Parliament 14 November 2018
I am going to make progress, Mr Findlay, if you do not mind.
Putting passengers first, ScotRail secured and introduced 40 available electric carriages to ensure that there is an electric service with enough seats until Hitachi delivers the full new fleet. Those solutions have maintained service provision and increased capacity, with more than 17,200 extra seats already available each day on Edinburgh to Glasgow services—not that Colin Smyth acknowledged that.
As we move towards the delivery of all 70 of the new train sets by next spring, more trains will enter service on our newly electrified network, which is part of our £5 billion investment in the railway across Scotland. That will deliver significant improvements to routes from Stirling, Dunblane and Alloa in December and to the route between Edinburgh and Glasgow Central via Shotts from May 2019. The new fleet will also provide more seats on existing routes such as the North Berwick, Lanark and Glasgow south electric lines, which will in turn allow for a further cascading of existing refurbished trains to other routes. Overall, that will boost seating by 23 per cent compared with the start of the franchise. We of course want to do more, and another 200 extra services will be introduced across the country over the next few weeks to make rail travel more attractive for commuters and leisure users, and to boost the wider Scottish economy.
Labour members might not be interested in this, but they should listen to it. [Interruption.]