Transport, Infrastructure and Climate Change Committee

Meeting date: Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Official Report 556KB pdf

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Forth Crossing Bill

Agenda item 3 is continued evidence taking on the Forth Crossing Bill. Today we will hear from witnesses representing local authorities and transport organisations. During this and the sessions over the next few weeks, we will examine the proposals in the bill to create a public transport corridor, and we will consider the impact on public transport services. Just to recall comments from last week’s session, I note for the record that the Forth Crossing Bill Committee will lead on the bill, and this committee will focus specifically on public transport aspects. We will report to the lead committee in due course.

I welcome our panel of witnesses. We are joined by Alex Macaulay, partnership director at south east of Scotland transport partnership; Bob McLellan, head of transportation services at Fife Council; and Marshall Poulton, head of transport at the City of Edinburgh Council. I thank you all for joining us and for providing your written evidence to the committee, which members have been given. Do any of you wish to make brief opening remarks before we begin the questions?

Thank you all for your opening remarks, many of which were geared towards public transport. The lead committee may address the timescale of the scrutiny of the bill and the wider impact on the existing powers of local authorities more specifically than we will.

In your joint position statement, which reflects much of what you have said in your opening remarks, you state:

“the project being developed by Transport Scotland does not include any significant measures to encourage greater use of public transport”.

You have all said that you would like such measures to be included.

Several members of the committee were surprised last week by the evidence from the developers on the extent to which some fairly obvious first questions do not appear to have been asked or considered in the development of the project. Some of the answers to those questions may not need to be in the bill, but they should be developed alongside it and inform the overall project.

Can you expand on the public transport measures that you have suggested? Can they be prioritised, or is it an all-or-nothing list?

Do you have suggestions for bus-related infrastructure or other public transport impact issues that you wish to be included in the bill or developed alongside it?

I can answer the first bit, but I cannot give you the exact date on which we became aware of the decision. There was no prior notice of the shift from a multimodal crossing to a managed crossing.

I do not recall any dialogue with SEStran. I cannot remember the date when the announcement was made, but it will be on record somewhere.

I am not really looking for dates; I just want to know whether discussion took place before the decision was announced.

Mr Poulton, was there any prior discussion with the City of Edinburgh Council?

What about Fife Council, Mr McLellan?

One issue at the outset was that the consultation was targeted via the regional transport partnership and reference groups so, technically, local authorities were not in the loop on the full range of consultation. However, in fairness to SEStran, it kept us informed of its dialogue with Transport Scotland. The phrase “distress project” seemed to come out in the past couple of years, when we heard about the condition of the existing bridge and other reasons for the project. However, at no stage was there an intimation of a change from one mode of bridge to another.

The SEStran integrated transport corridor study in 2005 usefully described how it envisaged the two bridges operating together. From memory, I think that the terminology was that it was a “balanced strategy” that sought to optimise the use of the existing bridge and the new one by public transport and other vehicular traffic. We have raised concerns with Transport Scotland about the interoperability of the two structures. I note from last week’s evidence to the committee that that has been raised by other witnesses.

That is not what I am saying, and that is not what SEStran is saying. We are simply saying that we seek the support of not only this committee but, given the opportunity, the Forth Crossing Bill Committee in encouraging the Scottish Government to give us that commitment. In opening the 19 January meeting, Councillor Imrie, the chair of SEStran, welcomed the progress that had been made in developing the public transport strategy and said that it broadly met the aspirations of the three councils in SEStran that were represented.

I also emphasise that the projects set out in annex C are not the proposals that the councils and SEStran initially put to the minister; instead, they are Transport Scotland’s response, which was supported by the minister. In other words, annex C is the Government’s response to our case. According to my document references, our initial case is set out in the joint position statement, which is attachment number 1 in my written submission. Marshall Poulton has already referred to some other elements of attachment 1 that the Government has not included as part of annex C.

That is what I would like to get a feel for. I will not call what Mr Poulton mentioned a wish list, but he mentioned a couple of other projects in the context of the £50 million. I assumed that when he referred to the projects in annex C, he was using today’s prices, but I am less sure of that in the light of what Mr Macaulay has just said. What is the value of the package that, ideally, the three organisations would like to be provided? What is the value of the package that constitutes Transport Scotland’s response? I just want a rough idea.

Okay, but annex C does not represent the final stage of the negotiations between yourselves and Transport Scotland.

Like Bob McLellan, I can check, but my understanding is similar to his—they are 2006 prices and optimism bias is not included.

The project per se is being driven by Transport Scotland, which has held a number of consultation and information meetings in various towns on the Fife side. People have had the opportunity to come to those meetings, primarily to look at nice pictures of the new crossing but also to ask questions, if they have been of a mind to do so.

Detail on bus service improvements has not been provided because, as has been said, they have not been included as part of the project. The only reference in the existing documentation is to improvements to the circulation of buses and traffic in and out of Ferrytoll.

Obviously, that is of interest to the people who use Ferrytoll. I use it on a daily basis and there is no doubt that, because of its success and the number of buses that go through it, that facility will need to be improved with or without the new crossing; that improvement will take place as part of the new crossing project.

With regard to specific meetings about public transport and buses, the public transport aspects appear to have been considered separately from the crossing, so that type of consultation has not—to my knowledge—taken place, at least in Fife.

15:30  

I take it that something similar happened, in terms of local consultation, with regard to most of the projects that are mentioned in annex C.

They would be both north and south.

Is there any way in which the ITS can be designed to improve journey times for public transport or HOVs? Can the system be designed so that some of the problems that you have discussed can at least be alleviated?

Bob McLellan referred briefly to annex C, which contains proposals for hard shoulder running on the M9 southbound on the approach to Newbridge.

The current proposal for improvements to Newbridge is to provide bus lanes at the expense of general traffic lanes through the key elements of the junction. That would fit in with Marshall Poulton’s ITS strategy. The roundabout is signal controlled and grade separated, so improving the signal control and the flow through it, particularly for public transport, would be key.

I flag up one of the proposals in annex C as being medium term. If new slip roads from the M9 spur down to the B800—that is the new name for the A8000—are combined with hard shoulder running on the M9 south of that area, that would get traffic on to the B800 as, effectively, a dedicated public transport route up to and across the old bridge.

Our proposals address many of the key issues for public transport priority, but a fair amount of work is still to be done to convince us all that the proposals are as good as they can be.

I am glad that the plan is for the road network on either side of the bridge to revert back from local authority to trunk road status. That has been an anomaly for years on both sides, and the current situation—in which there is a 2-mile section of local authority road that should be part of the national trunk road network—is not satisfactory.

The future operational management and maintenance of the new bridge must be a question for Transport Scotland to answer. It has to consider any potential benefits in FETA managing both bridges rather than the new one becoming another bridge—such as the Kingston and other bridges, which are equally complex structures—that Transport Scotland manages itself.

I can confirm that the most recent meeting was on 19 January. As the Halbeath and Rosyth projects are perhaps slightly further advanced because they were presented for consideration as part of the STPR, part of the discussion on 19 January was on how we can take them forward. As a council, we were not in a position to fund the construction of the sites at Halbeath and Rosyth, so we took the decision two years ago that, considering the financial climate, there was no point in developing the projects further when there was no likelihood of having the funds to build them. Since then, the bridge project has developed, and we believe that the sites should go ahead as part of the rounded public transport elements of that project.

The figures show that, if the projects at Rosyth and Halbeath come to fruition and are 80 per cent occupied, they will save a whopping 876,000 single-way trips—almost 1 million trips—per annum across the bridges. At £12 million, those two park-and-ride projects represent a decent bang for the buck.

Branching out slightly, I want to ask what involvement your respective organisations have had with STPR project 25—light rapid transit between Edinburgh and Fife. Can you say anything about the status of the project and what stage it has reached?

From a Fife perspective, I can confirm what Alex Macaulay has just said. In our local plans, which are currently being revised, renewed and updated, we have certainly taken account in the planning process of the public transport corridors that might be used for rapid bus transit or trams in the future. All of that has been fed in. Obviously, rapid bus transit is more likely to be developed in the short to medium term—or even the relatively long term—but the corridors will nonetheless be reserved for public transport.

For north of the Forth, we need first and foremost to reserve the line and then to decide where the project fits into the council’s overall local transport strategy and into the regional transport strategy. The proposed alignments are currently being put into an on-going update to the local transport strategy. The proposals will be provisionally costed, but they will not be the subject of detailed work because, as several people have mentioned already, we need to be careful and realistic about the extent to which we can achieve construction even of bus priority lanes in the short to medium term. If the situation changes and an abundance of money becomes available for bus priority lanes and the like, the good news is that we will have preserved the alignments so we will be ready to go. We would be able to construct the lanes fairly quickly and go through the planning process fairly quickly.

So you are not threatening an extension of the road works as far as Dunfermline just yet.

Legislation would be needed to give a lane over to buses. The lane could be dedicated, by using green slurry seal, for either 24 or 12 hours a day, but if we were managing that dynamically, we could put up gantries on Queensferry Road. That would come with an aesthetic downside, as it would not look too pretty, but it would be quite efficient in a functional sense. Such systems are used to great effect on the continent and in America to get the best use out of road capacity.

That is all very positive. I take it that we will see an end to local authorities putting signs up at bus stops that say, “We don’t know when the next bus will come, so please phone Traveline”—I cannot remember in which local authority I saw that. I also take it that we will encourage local authorities to overcome the reluctance that they sometimes have to putting information on notice boards.

My question was, indeed, directed to Mr McLellan.

Might your organisations consider using bus quality partnership or quality contract powers to ensure best use of the Forth road bridge for bus services following the opening of the new Forth crossing?

As far as SEStran is concerned, the real-time passenger information project is being promoted very much in partnership with the two big operators. FirstGroup and Stagecoach are active participants in that project. We have a partnership agreement—not necessarily a quality contract—with them for joint provision of services.

In my experience of using buses during the past five, six or seven years, high winds have forced the bus not to go across the bridge on only one occasion. That was quite convenient for me anyway, as I could just walk up the road to Inverkeithing and go straight into Edinburgh on the train, but it has only happened once, so the wind will—I hope—not be a major issue.

That could be a big caveat.

Given that you have answered that you wish such provisions to be made, how much extra money would that add to the cost of the project, which is already expensive?

I think that I was slightly mixed up in my comments a moment ago, for which I apologise. The existing bridge will require continued maintenance and, at some stage, the cyclists and pedestrian facilities on the existing bridge will not be available. If there are no facilities on the new bridge, what will cyclists and pedestrians do? That was the point that I was trying to make; I got the old and the new crossing mixed up.

I do not know what the cost implications would be, but in all new development proposals for transport, with regard to environment law and every other aspect of life, we build in public transport considerations. The Forth crossing project is no different.

I am a bit confused. Are you not asking for the new bridge to have pedestrian and cyclist access? Is it all about the current bridge?

With the current approach, we are still at “hopefully”, not guarantees.

I agree with my colleagues that the trick is to get good public transport in place. Public opinion can never be guaranteed, as I am sure you know.

I will kick off, and I will be brief. First, I want to correct a minor typo in my written submission. In the covering letter, I refer to a meeting with the Minister for Transport, Infrastructure and Climate Change on 20 January, but the meeting was on 19 January. That is correctly recorded in the note of the meeting.

More important, I stress that SEStran supports the progress of the bill through Parliament and does not want there to be any delay in the process. We have expressed to the minister our concerns about the lack of public transport facilities within and associated with the bill. It is fair to say that the measures that we seek can be developed outwith the legal process of the hybrid bill. Powers are available to the Scottish Government to deliver the public transport measures that we seek.

I refer the committee to annex C of attachment 5 of our written submission, which is the most recent version detailing the public transport measures for which we are seeking the Scottish Government’s support. My role today on behalf of SEStran is to encourage the committee as much as I can to seek a commitment from the minister and the Scottish Government to implement the measures in that annex. I emphasise that the proposals flow from a paper that was prepared jointly by SEStran and three of our partner authorities, two of which are represented here today, and one of which has a representative in the public gallery. At our last meeting with the minister, Russell Imrie, SEStran’s chairman, expressed support for the general proposals in annex C, and SEStran seeks the committee’s support in achieving the Scottish Government’s support for the implementation of those public transport measures.

15:00  

I thank the committee on behalf of Fife Council for the invitation to attend this meeting.

For the avoidance of any doubt, Fife Council supports the development and implementation of the new Forth crossing project. Furthermore, the council does not object to the bill per se, and we do not want to delay its passage, as we believe that the delivery of the project is crucial to the successful economic wellbeing of Fife, the south-east of Scotland and the country as a whole. However, we are concerned about some aspects that are not currently addressed by the proposals. It is said that there is likely to be a 39 per cent increase in traffic by 2017. We firmly believe that complementary public transport measures must be developed and implemented as an integral part of the overall project, preferably before the new crossing is in place.

Our three concerns rest on the need for further development of public transport, and we are working—as has already been said—with colleagues in Edinburgh, West Lothian and SEStran, and with the Scottish Government and the Minister for Transport, Infrastructure and Climate Change. The bill—or one of the related documents—mentions that the crossing will not be carbon neutral. We believe that the introduction of a proper public transport strategy in advance of the new crossing being built will solve that part of the equation. In addition, the increase in local traffic will be an issue.

We believe that a proper public transport strategy will address the public transport deficiencies in the current proposals, the emissions issues and the local transport issues.

Transport Scotland did not seem able even to guesstimate the modal shift that it hoped would be achieved or the demand for park and ride and other parking provision in the rail network to the north of the Forth. Does it strike you as a little disappointing that such questions do not seem to have been addressed?

It would be helpful if you could let us know in writing whether prior discussion took place with the council about the option.

As I said at the outset, Fife Council has not objected to the bill; indeed, we are working with Transport Scotland, ministers and other councils on the matter. At some stage, however, there needs to be a commitment to deliver a public transport strategy and the projects set out in annex C of attachment 5 of the SEStran submission or some enhanced version of that annex. We are looking at putting some timescales against some of those projects which, at the moment, have only indicative timescales, such as less than five years, five to 10 years and so on.

Fife Council has already significantly developed the two projects north of the bridge that I mentioned—the Halbeath and Rosyth park-and-ride schemes—and as our submission makes clear, we believe that we can deliver those projects if a funding package is made available by 2013. The last time we spoke to Transport Scotland, it confirmed that that would more or less tie in with the construction time for works north of the bridge. Obviously, we need to go through planning, due diligence and such like, but we should be able to deliver not only those two projects but the hard shoulder running from Halbeath to the bridge in parallel with the timescales for the new crossing.

Although we have objected to the bill on the grounds that it should cover the construction of the infrastructure, I do not think that we will have any problem if a memorandum of agreement is set up and if annex C or whatever we come up with gets a funding commitment and that funding is ring fenced solely for public transport.

We are now looking for a parallel track such as the memorandum of agreement that Marshall Poulton has suggested.

To be fair to the minister and, indeed, the Transport Scotland representatives and Scottish Government officers who attended the meeting on 19 January, I do not think that anyone has demurred from the content of annex C. The main issue is how it will be paid for. This is how the term “distress purchase” seems to have come into the vocabulary; in other words, they are saying, “We’re going to build a bridge because that’s all we can afford to build.” I think that that represents a seriously missed opportunity. As Bob McLellan has said, some of the projects in annex C are also in the STPR, which means that they have legitimacy and can be regarded as national priorities. All we are asking for is a commitment from the Government to implement them. That is not a lot to ask, given the proportion of the project’s total cost that these public transport measures represent.

You said that when you met Transport Scotland on 19 January and discussed annex C, which sets out your cross-Forth public transport aspirations with regard to the Forth crossing project, its representatives did not demur from your proposals. What did they have to say to the notion that, if the Scottish Government does not sign up to a memorandum of understanding, you might maintain your objections to the main project?

Perhaps I can chip in on this question. We did not say at that meeting that the Government needed to sign up to such a memorandum or we would continue to object to the project.

At the initial meeting with Transport Scotland in December, there was discussion of wider projects such as the Edinburgh orbital bus route and a cross-Forth ferry/hovercraft, some of which will have a direct link to the new crossing and some of which will have a slightly less direct link to it. After the discussion at that meeting, annex C was put forward at the January meeting, but there was an omission. We are not talking about an add-on: Transport Scotland has accepted that the A90 northbound bus priority should have been on the list. To all intents and purposes, it is included in the cost. As has been said, the cost of the projects to improve public transport that can be directly linked to the Forth crossing project is somewhere between £43 million and £50 million.

Shirley-Anne Somerville has a brief supplementary.

If the projects are delivered by the public sector, they will be zero rated for VAT, so that is not an issue.

Charlie Gordon: Have you consulted communities to the north and south of the Forth with a view to establishing how cross-Forth bus services could be improved following the opening of the new Forth crossing?

But my question is whether you, as local authorities, have consulted communities on either side of the Forth about their public transport aspirations. You are showing us an annex that represents your aspirations for projects; I am trying to establish the extent to which they reflect the recently expressed aspirations of the local communities.

Yes. Those projects emerged as part of our local transport strategy, which runs from 2007 to 2012. Although all the details were not available at that time, they would have been available around 2006.

We have just developed a transport 2030 vision, which has very high-level overarching principles. We did that as comprehensively as we could, with quite a limited budget, and we approached key stakeholders in the community to get their views.

The SEStran regional transport strategy document was approved by Scottish ministers in July 2008. It was developed over a two-year period, and extensive consultation was done around it, which included the consultation that Bob McLellan identified on the park-and-ride proposals. The document specifically refers to the relative capacity of the Forth crossing with regard to cars, buses and high-occupancy vehicles, high-occupancy vehicle lanes and so on.

SEStran is seeking to put the flesh on the bones of that regional strategic position, as the extensive consultation showed a high level of public support for the RTS. We are confident from a strategic point of view that we are taking the right direction.

You have anticipated my final question. The policy memorandum states that the Forth Crossing

“will not provide a step change increase in the capacity of the route”

and that

“increased travel demand for movement across the Forth will need to be met by improved public transport.”

Do you consider that scenario likely? What needs to be done to make that happen? Presumably the answer is, “Most of what we have already mentioned.”

My question is initially for Marshall Poulton, but others are more than welcome to comment. The City of Edinburgh Council states in its written evidence that the Forth crossing will result in increased traffic levels—we have already discussed that slightly. What impact will such increased levels have on cross-Forth bus traffic? What can be done to alleviate any problems?

Currently, there are about 425 bus movements per day over the bridge, some of which have spare capacity. We would look to use and expand that capacity, especially with the Rosyth and Halbeath park-and-choose schemes being in place.

With regard to the volume of traffic that comes over the bridge, Transport Scotland has proposed a number of ITS measures, which are very welcome. Being an advocate of ITS and having implemented a number of ITS tools throughout Glasgow and down in London, I believe that they are very good, although they come with a downside. The benefits come from ITS reducing congestion, and improving safety and the environment; the downside is that ITS are such good tools that we will always get additional throughput—the benefits are eaten up by induced traffic coming back on board. Research has shown that to be the case in Glasgow, on the M42, which has active traffic management, and in and around the M25 in London. We would therefore welcome ITS, but they come at a price; there is increased efficiency, but more traffic comes on board. That is why we want the public transport strategy to be an integral part of the scheme.

At the moment, buses score quite significantly over cars by going in the auxiliary lane at Admiralty junction to Ferrytoll and picking up passengers, but the auxiliary lane stops at the bridge. Under the new and revised arrangements for the new crossing, the existing bridge will be for public transport and the buses will go right through, so journey times for bus traffic will definitely improve. Depending on the level of congestion or otherwise on the new crossing, it will be more advantageous to use the bus.

There is an issue with northbound traffic coming from Edinburgh at the afternoon peak. Since the changeover from the A8000 to the M9 spur, priorities have changed, as we all know, so rather than traffic tailing back on the A8000, it tails back on the M9 spur, which just means that the car park effect has moved. There are definitely issues around bus priority, and some of the projects that are listed in annex C seek to address the afternoon peak traffic coming out of Edinburgh.

There are a couple of hot spots around Edinburgh, such as Blackhall and Queensferry Road. Buses have some priority at Blackhall, but it becomes more difficult on Queensferry Road. However, there is no point in giving buses all the priority in the world at Blackhall and Queensferry Road if they have no priority northbound on the bridge. Traffic gets out of Edinburgh relatively easily, but it gets caught up on the south-side approach to the bridge, which defeats the purpose of prioritisation. Prioritisation must be in place both in Edinburgh and on the approaches to the bridge.

It seems as if a lot of the issues south of the river arise from problems that could have been foreseen but were not dealt with when the M9 spur was built. Reference has been made to changing the traffic flow because a different car park effect has been created, and to hard shoulder running on the M9 spur. Were those issues foreseen? Are we talking about trying to redesign our way out of a problem that arose only a few years ago when the spur was built?

I will answer that, because I referred to the change in priorities on the M9 and A8000. We do not have the space on the existing bridge to give priority to public transport. Whatever is done at the moment with regard to giving priority to public transport on the southern approaches to the bridge, it has no priority once it is on the bridge. Whether the new crossing is a balanced crossing strategy or a replacement or additional bridge, it will provide the capacity to allow priority to be given to public transport. It will also allow enhanced measures for public transport on the north and south sides of the river so that it can use the additional space.

There will be opportunities at the approaches on the south side that have not been available so far, with just the existing two-lanes-either-way bridge. With the new crossing in place and the relatively small cost even of the whole package of projects in annex C—at £50 million, compared with £2.3 billion or whatever the overall costs will be—such measures can be delivered, and they will make the crossing a truly integrated public transport project rather than just a crossing with limited public transport access from both sides.

15:45  

We have been emphasising the public transport priority in association with the development of the new crossing. There is a wider agenda, too. We need to have the information in place as well as the infrastructure, so that people know what services are available. Bob McLellan referred to the quality of the product that is provided. I can give a couple of examples with which SEStran has been pretty successful so far, or is about to be.

One example is TripshareSestran.com, which is a simple, cost-effective website that matches people’s journeys so that they can share them in the same car. Since the site was introduced at the end of 2006, we have saved something like three and a half round trips to the moon in vehicle kilometres.

That impact will be increased significantly if high-occupancy vehicle lanes are available on the areas of major congestion so that multiple-occupancy vehicles can bypass the queues in which the single-occupancy vehicles will be stuck. In general, it is fairly easy to arrange such trips. The bigger the population of people who participate, the more opportunity people have to have their journeys matched; and the bigger the scheme, the more successful it becomes.

We produced a park-and-ride strategy last year for the SEStran area. An awful lot of detailed information on the existing park-and-ride sites in the area came out of that strategy. One initiative for this year is to get that information out. We will set up a web-based, information technology-based system that will enable anybody to find out how long it will take them to get from their house to the nearest park-and-ride site, what public transport services are available from the site and how far they can get within half an hour or an hour by public transport—it is amazing how far it is possible to get within an hour by public transport from a lot of the park-and-ride sites within SEStran. The data will also identify the services at the site, such as whether it is staffed, has closed-circuit television to protect travellers’ cars, is sheltered and has heating in the waiting room.

That is a big issue, because many car drivers do not think that way. If we get such quality of information out into the public domain, it will help to encourage people to come out of their cars and use public transport. It will also help them to use the park-and-ride sites as park-and-choose sites, where they can choose to trip share with another car driver and thereby cut down the number of vehicles.

Those are only two examples. There is a wide range of other things that we need to do, but those two will happen anyway.

A perfect vehicle is currently available: the national network control centre, which is undertaken by the traffic Scotland service on an agency basis for Transport Scotland. It has eyes and ears and various systems for strategic and tactical management and perhaps for the local management that Alex Macaulay talked about. The current organisation is doing a good job. Perhaps the maintenance of the structure and the fabric of the bridges could be done by FETA, but the operational traffic control should be done centrally by traffic Scotland, so that, for example, traffic can be moved from the Kincardine bridge to the new, balanced crossing.

16:00  

Given that the new Forth crossing and the existing road bridge will constitute a balanced or managed crossing—however we describe it—would there be benefits in having both bridges managed by one organisation? If so, should that organisation be the Forth Estuary Transport Authority, the Scottish Government or a new body?

I will jump into the deadly silence that followed that leading question. There is no doubt that there would be operational benefits to having the crossings managed by one organisation. There are two alternatives: Transport Scotland and FETA. FETA has 40 years’ experience of managing a complex suspension bridge and has world-renowned expertise in managing big bridges. FETA also has 40 years’ experience of managing the traffic problems that are associated with the existing bridge. Offset against those arguments is the fact that the new bridge will be a different structural animal. It will not be the same type of bridge as the existing bridge, so it could be argued that the expertise on the new bridge will rest with Transport Scotland and its professional advisers.

From an operational point of view, to have the two bridges managed by different authorities would potentially be a recipe for problems. SEStran has not taken a position on the issue, but I tend towards backing the organisation that has been managing the crossing for the past 40 years, because it has not done a bad job.

So we are a long way from the stage of putting together a business plan and specifying a cost for a rapid bus transit scheme.

Bus rapid transit in the development area east of Dunfermline and its connections to the bridge have been costed at a preliminary stage as part of the feasibility work. Not surprisingly—although I do not have the figures to hand—bus rapid transit came out significantly cheaper than light rail rapid transit. For the south side of the bridge, the costings are very much in line with annex C because the alignments that we identified for bus rapid transit are the alignments that we are looking for as part of annex C. Costings are available but they are all at that first stage and are, obviously, not detailed design costings.

Does Mr Poulton have anything to add?

Not yet.

That has already been tested to a certain extent. When we built phase 2 of Ferrytoll—the multistorey element—we fortunately had an overspill car park from the Deep Sea World facility adjacent to Ferrytoll. Nonetheless, there are two busy roundabouts there and the buses went through both: they went through the existing Ferrytoll and through the supplementary Ferrytoll facility, where there was a Portakabin, that was used during the construction of the multistorey building. There was a significant downturn in the number of people using Ferrytoll during that period as a result of that disruption, which was relatively small in comparison with what might happen during the construction of the new crossing.

On the whole, the argument for public transport is about the longer term, but in the short term people who have chosen to move to public transport could choose to move back again if the experience is not what it should be. As I said, the opportunity existed and the time was available to allow public transport schemes to be put in place before or at the same time as construction commences on the north side of the bridge. If priority is given to Halbeath, that will have the added advantage of getting people on to public transport closer to the origin of their journey, rather than adopting the dartboard approach of getting them on to it as close to the bridge as possible. It would be a great outcome if there was an improved modal shift to bus as a result of building a new crossing, rather than the opposite being the case. I think that that can be achieved if there is an overall commitment to building the park and rides at the right time, marketing them properly and making the option attractive enough, even for some of the routes that operators find less attractive.

Out of curiosity, what type of legislation would be needed?

Can you give us more information about how that may work in Fife? What percentage of services could use the real-time passenger information scheme? The initiative is successful in Edinburgh, but I understand that it would not capture such a great proportion of the information elsewhere. Although it sounds good, would it work in practice for a person waiting for a local bus in Fife?

I will answer, although you were looking at Bob McLellan.

We are promoting a contract for real-time passenger information in partnership with Stagecoach, which is the dominant operator in Fife. If we get the funding for such a scheme in Fife, all Stagecoach services in Fife will be covered by real-time passenger information. The next stage, further down the line, will be to bring the smaller operators into the scheme.

I can give you what is known as the real-time Bob information. There are different tiers in Fife. I think that we were the first council in Scotland to have a bus passenger information strategy, and we now have the guidelines from SEStran, which are excellent. We would encourage all local authorities in the SEStran area to do the same. There is information at every bus stop in Fife—I accept that that is not what you asked about. They all have the code number, so that people can phone Traveline. If a person at a bus stop has a mobile phone, they can text Traveline and it will text back—for every bus stop in Fife, no matter how remote—when the next planned service is due. That is not real-time information but information on the next planned service. I understand that Traveline is moving towards providing real-time information. When and if that happens, rather than being just a planned information service, it could realistically become a real-time information service, which would be better.

Most people pick up public transport information at the bus stop. We have bus stations in Dunfermline, Kirkcaldy, Glenrothes, St Andrews, Leven and other places. That is where about 90 per cent of bus passengers either kick off or finish their journeys, although not all of them—I accept that. Detailed electronic passenger information is available at all those bus stations. At the moment, it shows only planned service times. However, if the SEStran RTPI scheme for Fife comes to fruition, that will become real-time information.

A full-time member of staff from Stagecoach is based in our Glenrothes office. We do not pay for him—Stagecoach pays for him—and his sole responsibility is to ensure that the passenger timetables and information are updated. Stagecoach provides 93 per cent of services in Fife, and we provide timetables in conjunction with it for other operators as well. That engenders a good working relationship. People pick up the timetables. The fact that all services are registered through the traffic commissioner for Scotland means that operators stick to their schedules. In fact, they even slow down along Leith Walk in the mornings so that they do not get ahead of their schedules—things are running too smoothly there now, Marshall.

However, this is another important point. I very rarely check a timetable, but I check the excellent bus tracker information in Edinburgh, which is available on my phone and on everything else. It is great to have that assurance that a bus is coming, but it is also reassuring that normal bus services are pretty damned reliable. Arguably, the more rural the location and the further removed a place is from the city centre, the more need there is for timetable information and the less need there is for real-time information, given that there is less chance of buses being delayed in a rural area.

As I have mentioned, we currently share costs at Ferrytoll with our primary operator. That is all up front and comes under a partnership arrangement. That could be a contract, but we feel that the current arrangement works well. If we are in a position to deliver park and ride at Halbeath and at Rosyth, we will look to do exactly the same by widening that partnership agreement between Stagecoach and us. Obviously, all operators have right of access—that goes without saying—and the system works very well.

In effect, all the services that come across the Forth are currently operated on a commercial basis. If services are taken into areas where they need a bit of a kick-start, the bus route development grant might be one avenue for doing that. If that avenue was not attractive, we could consider entering into a contract. However, I think that there will always be a demand for travel across the Forth. From a Fife perspective, we have been operating the Ferrytoll facility since 1999 or 2000, so we have that experience of a partnership approach. I think that we would look to continue that approach at Halbeath and Rosyth.

We have a similar experience. The quality bus partnerships work very well in Edinburgh, so I see no benefit in moving to contracts and service level agreements at this time.

As Mr Macaulay mentioned earlier, it is envisaged that, if the Forth road bridge is ever shut due to maintenance or high winds, buses will use the hard shoulder of the new Forth crossing. Do you have any comments on that proposed arrangement? For instance, what would happen in the event of breakdowns on the new Forth crossing?

We need to be clear that the hard shoulder’s primary function relates to road safety for dealing with breakdowns. The existing Forth bridge does not have a hard shoulder, so any breakdown causes major congestion and delay.

The question arises what the risk is that a vehicle breakdown that required the use of the hard shoulder would coincide with high winds, when public transport would generally use the hard shoulder. Obviously, the need for a coincidence of those two events reduces the risk of that problem arising. In effect, if a breakdown occurred on the hard shoulder when public transport was using it, the bus would need to stop and wait until it could find its way back out into general traffic to get past the broken-down vehicle. Such a system could operate perfectly safely, but it would involve disruption to public transport in those circumstances because the bus would need to wait to get out into the general flow of traffic. However, there would be much less disruption than would be the case if public transport was banned from the bridge altogether.

I suppose that there is a greater possibility that the crossing would be closed due to maintenance.

16:30  

That is a fair comment. As a caveat, I point out that I use coaches or single-decker buses on most of the routes between Fife and Edinburgh; the situation would be different for double-decker buses.

The new crossing should certainly include provision for cyclists and pedestrians. At some stage in the future, maintenance will need to be carried out on the new crossing and it will need to be closed at certain times. The existing bridge might be able to provide cyclist and pedestrian facilities, and the new crossing should also have such facilities. The Clackmannanshire bridge was opened not too long ago by cyclists going across it, but I do not think that that can be done with the new Forth crossing.

The one caveat is that segregated facilities would be needed if the new bridge is to be of motorway standard.

Hopefully.

We have covered most of the issues. If that happened, it would be a great shame and a disappointment to the ministers. We talked earlier about the public transport improvements that have been made over the past few years to make public transport more comfortable. I am a great believer in trying to change people’s travel behaviour. Alex Macaulay talked about real-time passenger information. We are working on personalised travel information and getting that right to the source. We are also looking at car-sharing schemes and high-occupancy vehicles. A mixture of those measures, along with the bridge and ITS, will go a long way towards ensuring—we could not guarantee it—that the structure will be one to be proud of and will cope admirably with the increased traffic in the future, assuming that we get an economic upturn.

I thank the committee for the opportunity to give evidence on what the City of Edinburgh Council believes to be very important issues. We object to various elements of the bill, but we do not object to its principle. I would like to make it clear that we support the development of a new crossing strategy.

We have serious concerns in three key areas, one of which Alex Macaulay has already mentioned. First, City of Edinburgh Council believes that the bill should be amended to allow the construction of infrastructure that will deliver significant benefits for public transport, and thereby mitigate the adverse effect of any increase in traffic that results from building the new bridge. We believe that such a strategy would accommodate any future growth in cross-Forth trips that might arise from economic development. Secondly, the council objects to the removal of certain of its powers as a roads authority, especially with regard to the transfer of future liabilities, because that will restrict the council’s ability to programme and co-ordinate road works, which is important. Thirdly, the council objects to the removal of its powers to control air and noise pollution during the construction period and the impact that that will have on local people and communities.

I am happy to answer any questions.

We have referred to annex C of attachment 5 of our paper, which relates to the public transport strategy and has been developed by Transport Scotland and three councils that are involved in SEStran. You asked about priority. Some projects in annex C have been developed over time. For example, Halbeath park and choose and Rosyth park and choose were covered in work that SEStran undertook as part of the SEStran integrated transport corridor work that was done in 2005. Those projects underwent the Scottish transport appraisal guidance process and both emerged positively, so all the assessment work for those two schemes was done four or five years ago. Both schemes also feature in the strategic transport projects review and have therefore been identified. All that we are saying about those projects north of the bridge is that they have been identified and they have positive cost benefit ratios. The Rosyth facility would provide park and ride for bus and rail. Significant benefits could be derived if the schemes were implemented—even more so if that were done before construction on the north side of the bridge.

As everyone knows, Ferrytoll has been a successful park and ride and has won several Scottish, UK and European awards. Construction of the new Forth crossing will cause much disruption. We do not want to put people off public transport, so it is a no-brainer that public transport measures should be in place north of the bridge, over and above Ferrytoll, to complement what exists. During construction, public transport usage should increase rather than decrease. That could be achieved with relatively small sums of money for the projects that I have mentioned. Colleagues can talk about other projects if you are minded to ask about them, convener.

Yes. The work that was undertaken on the Halbeath and Rosyth facilities was financed by the previous public transport fund. Those projects have been developed to a stage at which we are almost ready to apply for planning approval. The issue is the construction costs.

In the past five to seven years, Fife Council has been involved in several public transport programmes, including some with colleagues in First ScotRail and Network Rail. Railway platforms have been lengthened; First ScotRail has increased service frequency; park and rides have been created; additional parking—about 1,200 extra spaces—has been provided at railway stations; and Ferrytoll’s capacity has been increased from 500 to 1,040 spaces. Many public transport improvements have been made.

From its day of opening, the new bridge will rely completely on modal shift from car to public transport. Not taking account of how to develop further the public transport successes that I have just described—and they can be developed further—would be a big gap in the development of the project. Of the traffic from the north-east, 51 per cent passes Halbeath interchange on the A90/M90. Of the traffic to the current bridge, 21 per cent comes from Rosyth and Dunfermline. If we caught a reasonable percentage of that 72 per cent of traffic, we could have a huge additional impact on modal shift, particularly at the peak time on the bridge.

I will add information on modal share. It has been calculated that, in 2005, about 10 per cent of cross-Forth trips were made by bus. Transport Scotland projects that, for various reasons, that modal share will drop to 5 per cent by 2022 rather than increase.

I emphasise that much more technical work has to be done on the public transport measures and I share Bob McLellan’s disappointment that, despite pressure from local authorities and us to do it, it has not been done long before today.

Transport Scotland reckons that, if all the measures in annex C of attachment 5 of our submission are implemented, buses’ modal share will return to the 2005 level. The assumption in the analysis—bearing in mind that the replacement bridge is being built with limited vehicular capacity—is that any further growth in demand for cross-Forth travel will have to be met by public transport. The Edinburgh to Glasgow rail improvements will increase rail capacity across the Forth. However, unless buses are given a fair crack of the whip in comparison with cars, we know that drivers and passengers will sit in their tin box, with their air conditioning or heating on, listening to their quadraphonic sound, rather than get out of their car and use public transport. The fact that there is restricted capacity on the new bridge will not automatically mean that further growth will shift to public transport.

For some time, we have been making the case collectively to Transport Scotland that we need a much more rigorous projection of how much modal shift we will achieve as a result of improvements in public transport. To date, the minister’s response has been that annex C is a good starting point for a public transport strategy for cross-Forth movements. He has committed himself to seeking a commitment from the Government to implement such a strategy, once we know exactly what must be done, what it will cost and when it should be done. Let us not undermine that—it is good news and a major step forward from where we were six months ago, when we were making the case to colleagues in Transport Scotland.

Convener, you make a valid point. Transport Scotland may have been reticent about estimating modal shift because, frankly, much more technical work needs to be done to get an accurate projection. In round terms, even with annex C, it would appear that we are getting the 2005 status quo in percentage terms, which is not great.

I share my colleagues’ concerns. I am a bit disappointed that Transport Scotland did not address the issue at an early stage, but the minister’s comments on 19 January were welcome. My two colleagues have alluded to annex C, which we and the minister regard as a good starting point. The whole package of measures comes to about £50 million. One project—A90 northbound bus priority—was missing from the list. While the annex is a good starting point, when we examined it in more detail we discovered that it covers measures only for the morning peak hour—the pm peak hour is not covered. We would like to go further to bring about rail improvements and cross-Forth ferry improvements.

At the committee’s last meeting, Transport Scotland referred to the strategic transport projects review. We would welcome acceleration of two projects, in particular: bus orbital movements in Edinburgh and, more important, hard shoulder running on the A720. Transport Scotland alluded to the benefits that could be accrued from having intelligent transport systems on the crossing, which we welcome.

The A720 is one of the biggest congestion hotspots in and around Edinburgh and the Lothians, so it is essential that that project is brought forward.

As my colleagues have said, if we are to implement the package of measures, it must be done before construction starts, to mitigate any effects from the construction traffic.

One other concern is about modal shift. In the morning peak hour on Queensferry Road in Edinburgh, we have a tailback of approximately 1.7km without any incidents having happened. That is a concern in relation to climate change and our air quality management thresholds. Even without additional traffic, we will struggle to meet the nitrogen dioxide threshold. Whatever we do on a managed Forth crossing, it is essential that increased public transport facilities are put in place.

15:15  

I have one more question before I bring in other members. Previously, a new multimodal crossing was expected. Instead, the Government announced that it was going to build an additional road bridge and make the existing road bridge a public transport corridor. How much prior discussion was there with your organisations about that option and when were you made aware of the decision?

There was no dialogue on that.

I am relatively new in the council, so I cannot really talk about the dates or the background.

I can certainly get back to you with that information.

You have all said that you do not want the project to be delayed. I share those concerns, but it is a multibillion pound project that will provide infrastructure for decades to come—at least we hope that it will—so surely we want the project to be truly multimodal right from the start. If we do not amend the bill to ensure that that happens, how can we ensure, given the lack of dialogue with Transport Scotland to which you have referred, that the public transport elements are delivered, either in advance or at some point?

Is that what you are saying now?

Annex C, which excludes the A90 northbound bus priority, has a lower-range figure of £43 million and an upper-range figure of £51 million. I alluded to some other, desirable-but-not-essential aspects of public transport strategy that we would like to see implemented, but no figure has been attributed to those.

Fife Council is looking to focus on the projects in annex C. As we say in our submission, the cost of the projects in Fife equates to £7.1 million for the Halbeath project and £6 million for the Rosyth project. Taken together with hard shoulder running for high-occupancy vehicles and bus priority running from Halbeath to the bridge, the total cost will be £25 million. In other words, about half of the £50 million will be required north of the bridge, so I presume that the other half will be for projects south of the bridge.

I want to clarify something to ensure that we are getting the right figures. Am I correct in saying that the £50 million that you are talking about is based on 2006 prices, not outturn prices, and that it does not include VAT or optimism bias, so the final figure for any work done would be higher than £50 million?

I can speak only for the Fife projects. I do not think that the figures for them include optimism bias, but I can check that and get back to the committee after the meeting if that is not the case.

The prices have been updated from 2005 to 2006. I understand that 2006 is the baseline year for the bridge project and therefore for any associated projects.

I concur with that statement. Similarly, on the south side, there has been no direct consultation with local communities at all, certainly not by the City of Edinburgh Council or officials. However, there have been consultations and exhibitions from Transport Scotland and consultants with regard to the construction of the bridge.

The Rosyth and Halbeath projects in Fife have featured in our local transport strategy since 2006. As part of our development of that strategy, extensive consultation was done with stakeholder groups, including local communities.

Three short-term measures were outlined in the 2006 strategy. Those were to

“Provide new Park & Choose sites at Halbeath and Rosyth”;

to

“Provide a HOV lane between Halbeath and the northern bridgehead”;

and to

“Introduce bus priority measures on the approaches to the bridge”,

all within a five-year period.

A fourth measure was to examine feeder services that would go not only into Edinburgh, but out to the Gyle and West Lothian. The consultation took place in that context back in 2006.

Yes, that is fair enough. We are trying to achieve what is stated in the policy memorandum. Interestingly, that statement complies with the position statement in paragraph 5.5.2 of our regional transport strategy:

“the combination of old and new crossings should provide no more than the current two lanes in each direction available to single-occupant cars”.

That has been done, because the old bridge will carry public transport. The next bullet point in paragraph 5.5.2 states:

“all new traffic lanes across the Forth need to be dedicated to buses and high occupancy vehicles (HOVs) ... Consideration should be given to the possibility of allowing HGVs to access these lanes”.

I do not think that we have achieved that with the balanced crossing, but the RTS just referred to consideration being given. The next bullet point refers to

“HOV priority measures ... on the A90/M90”,

which is what we promote in annex C. The next one refers to

“physically separate running lanes for the mixed use of buses, HOVs and ... as far as possible, flexibility ... to enable full vehicle carrying capacity for traffic during periods of bridge maintenance”.

That is another issue that my colleagues have raised through their representations to the bill committee. Importantly, the final bullet point in paragraph 5.2.2 states:

“the promoter should be required to put in place”

a package of measures

“that will seek to ensure that traffic in Edinburgh will remain at or below the levels that would have been forecast without an additional crossing.”

That recognises that, even if we do not have an additional crossing, there will be increases in traffic in Edinburgh. However, we want to avoid the step change of releasing capacity restraint at the Forth crossing. I think that that position is reflected in the policy memorandum and largely reflected in the fact that the new crossing will simply be two lanes in each direction, plus a hard shoulder, which will be available for public transport when high winds require diversion from the existing bridge.

The Government has therefore gone a long way towards meeting what the RTS sought. The question is whether we can get the public transport measures that will support the statement in the policy memorandum—that is key to why we are here today.

Would the ITS be north of the river, or south?

Yes. That is why I look forward to seeing what tools Transport Scotland will use—will it be gantry control, headway control or ramp metering? Transport Scotland has not specified what tools it will use. There is an ITS toolkit, and the ITS measures are all there to pick and choose from.

The policy memorandum that accompanies the bill states:

“those travellers who do not need to drive in single or low occupancy cars will be encouraged to transfer to public transport.”

We have mentioned high-occupancy vehicles in passing in our questions, but I would like some more detail on the type of encouragement that should be given to people to travel in high-occupancy vehicles or on public transport.

I believe that 80 per cent of all vehicles going across the Forth road bridge are single occupancy. They represent the lion’s share of the traffic, and they are creating the lion’s share of congestion during peak times, particularly the morning peak. Making inroads into that number will obviously relieve congestion. At the same time, and probably more important, it will get people on to public transport, which will help with emissions and such like.

That will not be done just by having a public transport route on the bridge—there will have to be complementary measures. As you know, most of the coaches that run between the main towns in Fife and Edinburgh have leather seats and wi-fi, and travelling by bus is now a more pleasant experience than travelling by train. I use the bus every day between Edinburgh and Fife. It is a choice trip for me; I could use my car or the train, but I use the bus.

The quality of public transport has improved dramatically over the past three or four years. The operators are waiting—in particular, they are waiting for the public sector to play its part, not only on the crossing but also on enhanced public park-and-ride facilities and such like. Operators will play their part, and some of them have said openly that they would invest further in their fleets to provide routes.

The public transport strategy that is being developed between Transport Scotland, councils and SEStran will show that not all people go into central Edinburgh. That is a key point. Some bus routes go from Ferrytoll to West Lothian, the Gyle, Heriot-Watt University’s Riccarton campus and so on. They need to be improved—there is a lot of transport there. There are very poor linkages with Victoria Quay and the north of Edinburgh from Ferrytoll, which need to be improved. If the journey opportunity, the choice and a short journey time are available, people will use the services.

The cost benefits are not mentioned very often. Fife Council is marketing the fact that people who car share or use public transport can save more than £1,000 a year. That can pay for things that people need to buy, or cover the cost of their annual holiday, or whatever. People can get financial benefits. If the choice exists, and the journey time is parallel and comparable with a car journey, people will use public transport.

Three years ago, six people might have used a bus from Edinburgh to go to Fife in the morning; now it is 20 to 30 people. Buses pick up people all the way to Barnton—the services have become very successful. We should be able to build on such success.

Two will do just now, because I can feel the pressure from the convener to move on to my final question.

We already had some discussion about whether bus operators wish to supply different services. We heard in last week’s evidence that Transport Scotland believed that discussions with bus operators about improved cross-Forth services were a matter for local authorities or regional transport partnerships. What are your views on that? What discussions have you had to date with operators? Perhaps we could start with Mr McLellan, because he mentioned operators in his previous answer.

In Fife, 93 per cent of bus services operate commercially, so the council supports very few services, but that support still costs £4.5 million per annum. I mention that only because it is expensive to subsidise bus routes, as we all know.

One incentive in which the Scottish Government or Transport Scotland might be interested in the short term for routes that are perhaps not as well patronised as those between Edinburgh and Dundee—routes that go to slightly lesser areas to try to generate travel—is the bus route development grant that operated previously, which is now devolved to local authorities. Just last week, Fife Council let a bus route development grant for a service from Kirkcaldy to Ninewells hospital going through a number of populated areas in Fife. It is subsidised to the tune of £1.1 million over three years. After that, the operator has to operate it on a commercial basis for at least a year.

We have operated a number of such schemes. The 747 bus to Edinburgh airport began as a bus route development grant scheme, as did the X99 from St Andrews to Dundee. Those routes were not commercially viable and operators would not come in and run them except on the back of a bus route development grant. The grant is basically a subsidy for the first three years. If the patronage goes up, the council, Transport Scotland or the Government pays less, so we have paid a lot less than we anticipated over the subsidised period for some of the routes supported by the scheme. That is a good way of sharing the risk between the operators and the council on routes that are less attractive than the main ones. At the same time, operators will not sign up to it if they cannot deliver after year 3.

The quality and accessibility—low floors and wheelchair access—of the buses that are used have improved immensely over the past few years.

In general, operators who speak to us, whether they operate in Fife alone or cross Forth, appear to be willing to invest, and at the end of the day operators are willing to invest only if they can make money. They need, as we do, to be sure that proper public transport facilities will be in place. They know that at Ferrytoll people can watch telly, go to the toilet and get a snack while they wait—people do not wait long, because the buses are frequent, which is good—and that people are not in bus shelters getting wet, because there are proper facilities. If there were similar facilities at Halbeath, Rosyth and equivalent places south of the Forth, more and more people would use buses.

Our main bus operator is Lothian Buses, so we have not had discussions with other bus operators.

Alex Macaulay: SEStran has not had specific discussions in relation to the new bridge, but we have been promoting the Edinburgh outer orbital bus rapid transit project, which Marshall Poulton mentioned. The system would provide services round the city bypass corridor, with connections to services across the bridge. I reiterate that although bus operators are interested in projects of that nature, they will be convinced only if they are sure that there is a business case. We developed the business case for the outer orbital bus rapid transit project and we are presenting it to operators who might want to use the system.

It is unfortunate that that has not happened to date for the Forth replacement crossing. That is why we are here trying to get the public transport strategy nailed down. From that will flow the operational business case for the services that come out of the public transport strategy. That is the point at which we need to convince the bus companies that getting involved is worth their while.

Transport Scotland told us last week that it was in discussions with Fife Council on the park-and-ride sites at Halbeath and Rosyth. Will you confirm that the discussion on 19 January that you referred to—the joint meeting—is the most recent meeting, or have you had a separate meeting with Transport Scotland?

That is helpful.

Transport Scotland told us last week that it will be possible, following the opening of the crossing, to open a new park-and-ride site to the south of the Forth on the carriageway at the current A90 Echline junction but that that project would be taken forward by SEStran and the City of Edinburgh Council. Can we have an update on that? Given that SEStran has no capital funding and that councils are pretty hard pressed at the moment, what is the likelihood of the project progressing?

I will get my begging bowl out again.

I referred earlier to the SEStran park-and-ride strategy, and we were aware of Transport Scotland’s suggestion of using that section of the old A90 as a park-and-ride site. I must say that it did not appear as a priority in our park-and-ride strategy, primarily because of the danger that it would attract more trips across the bridge from Fife. There is an alternative argument that it would serve the corridor along the A904 out towards Bo’ness, but on balance it was not a high priority for us. I would not hold my breath.

Thank you.

I will make a start on that. Before the publication of the bill, SEStran took the view that we would need to know what we were aiming to do with light rapid transit across the estuary because, if either the new structure or the existing structure could carry light rapid transit, somebody—such as yourself—would ask where it would go.

A couple of years ago, therefore, we did a feasibility study on establishing corridors for light rapid transit or bus rapid transport in the major extension area to the east of Dunfermline, primarily to ensure that the corridors were protected as the development progressed.

We have achieved that because we have now provided that input to our planning colleagues in Fife Council. The corridors for light rapid transit and bus rapid transit in that eastern extension of Dunfermline have now been reserved, with the appropriate connectivity to the bridge.

More recently, last year we carried out a feasibility study for light rapid transit and bus rapid transit on the south side of the bridge. The study concluded that the preferred route for light rapid transit should come down the old A8000 through Kirkliston and link to the extension of the Edinburgh trams system west of Newbridge. We have fed that information in as part of our consultation with Transport Scotland. We also identified two—or perhaps three—bus rapid transit corridors: the M90 and the M9 down either as far as Newbridge or through Newbridge and into Edinburgh.

We have carried out initial feasibility studies to establish preferred routes, but we have not done the full-blown STAG appraisal of those routes or provided a business case for them. However, we have identified which routes could be used if we wanted to go ahead with them.

On timescales, it is fair to say that the delivery of light rapid transit across the Forth is a long time off—I do not wish to put a date on it because, frankly, I cannot really look that far ahead. However, the bus rapid transit proposals are potentially more medium term and would fit reasonably well with the proposals in annex C of the public transport strategy document that was referred to earlier.

We have a challenge finishing off our tramline 1A project. Obviously, we would like to see the tram network finished.

I would not like to give a timescale for that, but we want to build on the success of park and ride at Ingliston, Hermiston, Straiton, Newcraighall and so on. We would like the tramline to be extended at some point from the airport out to Newbridge to help to alleviate the problems at Newbridge that are caused by the mixture of the trunk road and the local roads from Edinburgh and, more important, the local roads from West Lothian—many residential developments that have been built in West Lothian are experiencing problems because of the bottleneck at Newbridge. That is why we welcome proposals for the future, such as the ones in annex C, either for LRT to go out to the new bridge or, if it is more cost effective, for bus rapid transit.

I turn to buses in the here and now and in the shorter term, with regard to the construction period for the new bridge. What impact will that have on public transport, particularly cross-Forth bus services?

I am keen to hear a bit more about how you can nudge people into making use of public transport alternatives once the new bridge is built. In particular, do you have any plans around the potential to promote bus priority measures on the roads leading up to the Forth road bridge?

We currently operate Ferrytoll. Fife Council and Stagecoach have a joint partnership arrangement, so we have experience of working with the private sector on an award-winning facility—as I said, it has won Scottish, UK and European awards. We want to develop the facility. A lot of marketing would have to be done to emphasise all the benefits, including the environmental benefits of and cost savings from using public transport and the fact that there will be less wear and tear on your car. I have a car but I rarely use it, which means that it is still in reasonable condition and does not have hundreds of thousands of miles on it. Nonetheless, it is still an option for a journey when public transport might not be appropriate.

We have had informal discussions with Stagecoach, which is our primary operator. Three years ago Megabus and Citylink did not go through Ferrytoll.

We have won awards for transport integration at Scottish and UK levels. We won the UK bus transport integration award last year, as a result of promoting the park and ride at Ferrytoll, the linkage to the new Norfolkline ferry to Europe and the rail interchange at Inverkeithing. People are coming off the train and getting on a bus or the ferry. They are also coming off the train at Inverkeithing and going to Ferrytoll and then to Edinburgh airport on the 747 bus.

There has been a colossal increase in the patronage of those schemes; I do not have the figures to hand, but the percentages are at least in the tens—if not heading towards 100 per cent—for some of them over a two or three-year period. Wee buses used to be used on the 747 airport service, for example, but larger buses have to be used now. Those facilities are all accessible, and there have been successes.

16:15  

However, if the Halbeath or Rosyth schemes come to life, a joint public-private partnership approach will be key, and the schemes must be marketed. We will have to let people know that the facilities are there, and we must convince them of the journey times and the quality of the experience so that they will choose to use those facilities rather than viewing them as a second or third-rate transport option. That is why I choose to use public transport, and because people have convinced me, I would like to think that I can do the same for hundreds of thousands of others.

I go along with everything that Bob McLellan said. One other aspect that we could consider is some form of dynamic traffic management on Queensferry Road, which has some junction and link capacity problems. There would be some spare capacity if we could operate an intelligent transport system, which would involve examining the tidal flow into and out of Edinburgh. There has not been a detailed study of that so far, but the technology is available. The legislation is not in place at present, but we could get some benefits from implementing such a system.

I do not want to quantify the benefits and say that they are great, because the tidal flow is not quite an 80:20 situation; it is closer to 65:35. We could examine the situation to see whether there would be any benefits in terms of improving the bus journey times into and out of Edinburgh and providing the reliability that Bob McLellan mentioned.

Just for clarification, I do not think that my colleague means primary legislation: he is talking about road traffic regulation orders and planning permission. The Parliament need not concern itself with primary legislation—the legislation exists, but the orders do not.

We carried out a study about a year and a half ago on a similar project to give buses priority on Queensferry Road. I will happily give Marshall Poulton a copy of that study, which perhaps came out before he arrived in Edinburgh. Things can be done on Queensferry Road to give buses greater priority without being detrimental to the general traffic, particularly within the urban section.

To return to Alasdair Allan’s question about encouraging people to use public transport, one initiative that we in SEStran are keen to promote is real-time passenger information. We already have it in Edinburgh, courtesy of the City of Edinburgh Council, where it has been part funded by SEStran in the past. We are now rolling the system out to East Lothian and the Borders, and we have a bid with the European Commission for funding to roll it out in Fife. That will be a step change in people’s knowledge of and confidence in public transport, which is a big issue.

I remind the committee of the developments that Traveline Scotland has delivered during the past few years. It has an access telephone line, a website and now an iPhone application so that people can contact it to find out exactly when the next bus is scheduled. It provides a good information service.

Traveline Scotland suffers from having a small promotional budget. If its promotional budget were a bit bigger, the general public’s appreciation of the services that it provides—which are really very good public transport information services—would be much wider and it would have a much bigger impact.

I do not think that any local authorities in SEStran have resorted to those tactics. SEStran has approved a regional bus passenger information strategy, which identifies standards for the information that must be provided at bus stops and bus stations throughout the region. The strategy, under which the onus is on the operator to provide the information, is still with some authorities that have yet to consider and adopt it. If an authority has an approved and adopted bus passenger information strategy and the operators do not provide the information, the authority has the power to provide the information and charge the operator for that service. The bus passenger information strategy is an important part of the legislation’s implementation.

I was looking at Mr McLellan, and his microphone is on.

Obviously, we have touched on some important issues, but we have strayed slightly away from the bridge. The next question is from Marlyn Glen, who I am sure will mention the bridge in her question.

I would go about tackling the issue by ensuring that ITS were in place. I would have an enhanced service by ensuring that a recovery vehicle was available to get any broken-down vehicle out of the way and off the bridge so as to free up the route for the public transport vehicles.

Should the Forth crossing include provision for cyclists and pedestrians?

I go along with that—there should be provision for cyclists. In Edinburgh, we aspire to meet the aims of the charter of Brussels by getting the number of cyclists up to 15 per cent by 2020. We are working closely with Transport Scotland on implementing our active travel plans. It is a long way to cycle from the Forth crossing to central Edinburgh, but it would be nice to get cyclists over the crossing by various modes of transport, assuming that there are no 50mph winds.

I would like cycling to be built into the plans for the future, but by utilising the current bridge, if that is possible. I certainly would not like to make a stab at the cost; I have not looked at that at all.

We believed during the earlier stages of “engagement” that there would be pedestrian and cycling facilities on the new bridge. However, I am sure that, during the development of the project and the various iterations of the project design, those issues, including cost considerations, have been examined more closely. There is no doubt that, as Alex Macaulay said, cycling and pedestrian facilities would be very costly due to the need for segregation. However, the councils—and most people—would say that, aside from cost considerations, the new crossing should be future-proofed to carry cyclists and pedestrians. What happens if the existing bridge is closed for significant periods of time in the future and pedestrians and cyclists cannot access it? That will be very difficult.

I have one final supplementary question, which relates to the issue of the existing bridge being a public transport-only route.



The use of the existing bridge has been a controversial issue. There were long-standing public campaigns against tolling to the extent that the money that was spent on smart tolling kit was, in effect, put down the drain and the tolls were abolished. There were long-standing campaigns for an additional bridge because of concerns about capacity, queueing and the time that it takes to get over the bridge in the rush hour. What guarantee is there that, from day one of the new bridge being open, if the Parliament approves it, if queues again start forming as people try to get over the bridge during the rush hour, people will not look over their shoulders, see a half-empty bridge next to them and put exactly the same pressure on any future transport minister or any future Scottish Government to open the bridge to let them over faster, dumping all that extra traffic into Edinburgh’s streets?

We have asked that question at meetings that we have had with colleagues from Transport Scotland and its consultants. On day one, if people are sitting in their cars in congestion on the new bridge and there are buses—albeit more buses, we hope—going across the old bridge, that will not be a good position to be in after the expenditure of perhaps £2 billion. That is why we believe that the public transport measures that must be put in place at minimal cost if we are to have a chance of getting people to move from cars to public transport are so important, as that situation cannot be allowed to arise. If lanes are free, it must be a possibility that cars in a congested lane would be diverted. However, if the bridge is designed properly, with enhanced public transport to start off with, people will hopefully start to move across to public transport and that question will not have to be asked. Nevertheless, I share your concern that, if lane space is available anywhere, people will always ask why it is not being used.

On the wider question of interoperability between the two bridges, it seems that, at some stage, fairly early doors in the development, the decision was made that one would be a public transport bridge and one would not be. However, that might not be the best way of utilising the capacity of both structures.

To my cost. Thank you all very much for your time in answering our questions. We will report back to the lead committee on the bill and the process will be with that committee from then on.

Meeting closed at 16:39.