ScotRail '˜sends average of 28 apologies every day'

ScotRail has apologised more than 10,000 times on Twitter this year. Picture: John Devlin

The train operator has said sorry to 10,026 travellers so far this year.

A new website - sorryfortheinconvenience.co.uk - tracks tweets sent by transport firms that include the words ‘sorry’ and ‘apologies’. Originally set up by Manchester-based web developer Omid Kashan.

But despite criticism levelled at the train operator in recent months, the likes of Virgin East Coast (60 per day) and the much-maligned Southern (110 per day) have a far greater ‘apology rate’.

The site also tracks apologies sent out by budget airlines Ryanair and easyJet - with Michael O’Leary’s carrier tweeting an average of just four apologies a day compared to easyJet’s average of 70 a day.

The total amount of apologies sent by all the tracked firms - including Transport for London, Megabus and TransPennine - is currently sitting at 398,479.

The website also tracks how much time has elapsed since the firms last apologised. At the time of writing, ScotRail had last apologised to a traveller just one hour ago.

Kashan, 26, told the BBC earlier this month that he had initially set up the site to focus on the Metrolink tram in Manchester - but overwhelming demand resulted in him adding more and more companies to his website.

“It doesn’t take too long to add a new operator,” Kashan revealed. “The one downside is that it only tracks apologies. So if a company never apologises then it wouldn’t show up, even if they were really bad,” he adds.