Parents blast ScotRail over botched roll-out of £1 child fare

Some parents have been forced to pay full ticket prices for their children to travel on ScotRail services after a botched roll-out of the £1 child fare.

An IT problem meant some families travelling this week were told the ‘Kids For A Quid’ tariff had not yet been uploaded on the system, so children would have to pay the full fare price.

Rail chiefs had already been branded “Scrooges” for scrapping free travel for children at the end of last month.

The £1 scheme was due to be up and running from 2 January.

But ScotRail was forced to reply to one irate father on Twitter, reassuring him the fares should be “on our system in the next 24-48 hours”.

A ScotRail spokesman said: “There may be some IT issues in certain areas, but they will be resolved where identified and the fare is in place.”

Scottish Conservative transport spokesman Jamie Greene told The Times the failure was “unbelievable”.

It is the latest ScotRail incident to spark passenger anger, coming after a 2.8 per cent increase in fares earlier this week and with hundreds of services having been cancelled due to a backlog in driver training.