Official Report 137KB pdf
Attending today's meeting are Councillor Alison Magee, Councillor John Scott, Councillor Walter MacLellan, Bob Christie, Trond Haugen, Iain Gabriel and Keith Rimmer. They will give us a presentation on the part of the Transport (Scotland) Bill that we are considering, before taking questions. I appreciate that our witnesses have not had much time to prepare; I say that because it gives us an excuse in case we ask some rather dumb questions. I am sure that we will tease things out in the question-and-answer session.
As you said correctly, convener, we have had little time to consider the bill—we did not see it until the end of last week. My opening remarks will, therefore, be brief. We will do our best to answer questions, which will probably be the most important part of today's meeting.
Thank you. Does any member have a question?
I have quite a few, but I will restrict myself to a couple to start with. As I understand it, both the Opposition parties tabled amendments to a similar bill at Westminster that sought to extend the powers of local government to bus fares and service frequencies, but the Government resisted that. However, such powers are critical. If local government will not be able to influence bus fares and service frequencies, much of the bill is a waste of time. What is your view on whether the bill should include such powers?
We agree that it should. Our original response to the consultation document included that suggestion. We would support a maximum fare ceiling and a minimum service frequency. That would give bus companies some flexibility, but would also recognise the investment that local authorities must make in quality partnerships. There is a rail regulator—it might be appropriate to have an equivalent for the bus industry.
Mr Gorrie has asked an important question. There are many issues surrounding accessibility to transport and the bill refers to concessionary fares and so on. However, one of the key issues is affordability. By and large, those who do not have cars find it difficult to afford bus fares. High bus fares cause severe difficulty in both rural and urban areas; at the moment, many fares are well beyond the reach of many people.
Quality partnerships have already been introduced in some areas of Scotland and in some areas they have broken down for commercial reasons. One of the biggest drawbacks in rural communities—and in the city of Edinburgh—is the possibility that bus wars will develop over which the quality partnerships will have no control. Quality contracts should have priority, rather than quality partnerships.
I know that North Lanarkshire Council and South Lanarkshire Council have discussions about common transport issues. Having visited Clackmannanshire Council, I know that many of the transport decisions that that council makes are based on the situation in Stirling. Do you have concrete evidence of such cross-authority working? Does that extend to cross-agency working on common transport policies in particular areas?
I can answer that in relation to my part of the world, which is the Highlands and Islands. There is a Highlands and Islands integrated transport forum. We also have a fruitful voluntary working party involving all the rail companies—ScotRail, Railtrack and so on—which has delivered station reopenings, a commuter train, transfer of freight from road to rail and various other things. Cross-agency working does work in the Highlands and Islands.
Do you think that the Scottish Executive must become actively involved, or does it merely have to give the powers to local authorities?
It must become actively involved. We would not like the Scottish Executive to impose solutions—we want a partnership approach. Our colleagues feel strongly that trunk roads should not exist in a separate little world; they are very much intertwined with local authority roads. Moves might be afoot to deal with the matter, but in the Highlands and Islands the Scottish Executive has responsibility for ferries and airports. Those are lifeline services for the people who live there. None of those modes should be in separate compartments. If we are considering transport strategies, different modes should be interlocked and should work together. We should not see the Scottish Executive as a separate body, which is trying either to impose solutions or to stand back from them. We want the Executive to be involved.
I am chairman of south-east Scotland transport partnership, which takes in Clackmannanshire and Stirling. We are only two years old, but one of the great benefits that we have found is that, although working together has taken time, the partnership has come together gradually and we are working constructively to ensure that cross-boundary flow of transport works. Sarah Boyack is very supportive. A new ticketing scheme has been highly publicised. SESTRANS is not a statutory body, but people will stay in it if they feel that it is working well and that there will be some gain at the end of it.
I have a quick example. We welcome much of the bill and I do not want the committee not to take that on board. There is talk of joint ticketing on buses—surely there is a case for multi-modal joint ticketing, especially in rural areas. We want such detail to be developed in the bill. We want all those who have responsibility for providing public transport to provide an integrated service.
Since local authority reorganisation, Aberdeen City Council and Aberdeenshire Council have worked closely through a joint committee on transport and planning. We have developed the bones of a transport strategy through the north-east Scotland economic development partnership, which was set up to examine economic development throughout the two council areas. That partnership involves the chamber of commerce, Scottish Enterprise Grampian and the two relevant councils. Differing partnerships will evolve in different areas. In relation to partnership with the Scottish Executive, a strategy will not work in Aberdeen unless the trunk roads are included as part of the overall package. That probably applies everywhere.
I wanted to ask about road user charging and workplace parking levies. Councils hold different views, but does COSLA have a position on that section of the bill? Has COSLA carried out any research into the revenue that could be generated from such schemes?
We are at an early stage on the matter. Some councils have done research on the viability of charging and I will leave that to my colleagues to answer.
Glasgow City Council is considering workplace parking charges and has decided that congestion charging is not practical because the city's boundaries are tightly drawn. The city has a population of 1.5 million and has a municipal population of 600,000. The M8—which runs through the city—is a trunk road that would, under the proposals, be exempt from a charging scheme. Glasgow City Council is setting up a study and appointing consultants to consider whether workplace parking charges would work if shopping parking charges were not included and whether developments such as the Braehead shopping complex would affect the scheme.
Bristow Muldoon asked whether COSLA had commissioned any research into the merits or demerits of road user charging and the revenue streams that might arise from that. Such charging is not a tool that will be available to all local authorities: it will probably be applicable in only a limited number of urban areas. We have therefore left it to local authorities to consider what might work locally. However, if we cannot take trunk roads into account, that is a real disincentive to road user charging and that applies to all the major urban centres in Scotland.
Edinburgh—perhaps uniquely in Scotland—has done a lot of preliminary work on road user charging. My council is satisfied that a workable scheme could be introduced in Edinburgh, using road user charging to produce an investment stream. That investment would be not only for Edinburgh transport, but for a package of measures in the wider Edinburgh travel-to-work area, which would involve the SESTRANS partnership that Councillor Scott spoke about.
Some local authorities have suggested that we should follow the Westminster bill and introduce charging on some trunk roads. What Walter MacLellan said suggests that he might like that for Glasgow. Are you saying that charging on trunk roads is not a bad idea, that we should go for broke and try to introduce it on all trunk roads or that we should not introduce it at all?
COSLA's policy is certainly not to charge on all trunk roads. We obviously recognise the strategic inter-regional and inter-urban nature of trunk roads but, as Walter MacLellan said, in specific instances where trunk roads could be included in a congestion charging scheme, it would not seem logical to exclude them. If we did, all the traffic might then hurtle towards that trunk road and cause the congestion that we were trying to reduce. We could support trunk road tolling, but only in very limited circumstances.
So would you agree with the Westminster position?
We would certainly like it to be considered.
The wording that has been used in the Westminster bill is quite helpful; it talks in terms of the preparation of a strategy at local level, which may include trunk roads. It is aimed at the urban situation, rather than the inter-urban situation. At many points in the trunk roads system in the central belt there is far more local traffic than inter-urban traffic. We need to leave it much more open. At the moment, charging tolls on trunk roads seems to have been eliminated, which means that west central Scotland cannot consider that as realistic option.
We need to take the people with us. If we talk about road tolling, it tends to put people off. We have been emphasising congestion charging—ridding cities of their problems with fuel emissions and the like. Edinburgh succeeded in persuading traders and the surrounding local authorities to support congestion charging by pointing out that we would get something back from it. To do that, it is important to stress hypothecation of resources. People need to see the money being spent to benefit their area, the park-and-rides that it funds and a change in transport modes before they will say that it is a good idea that they will continue to support.
It must be additional money, rather than money the council already has.
Possibly. I intended to ask a question on the issue that Bristow Muldoon raised, but I want first to comment on the point that you have just made. My concern is that if the Edinburgh scheme is implemented, people from outlying areas will have to pay to go into Edinburgh, but the money will accrue to City of Edinburgh Council, which will use it to improve Edinburgh's transport network. If money is hypothecated, how will it be dispersed to rural and outlying areas?
I mentioned that an essential part of the strategy for investment that we are pursuing is to deal with the whole Edinburgh travel-to-work area. That extends as far as Clackmannan and Stirling in the west and the Borders in the south, and covers all the authorities in between, as well as Fife. That is a big geographical area that includes a large number of potential schemes that benefit not only the individual areas concerned, but Edinburgh. They offer people in the wider travel-to-work hinterland better and more effective public transport choices when making journeys into Edinburgh. Under the arrangement that is proposed, we can disburse a very effective transport investment package in a logical way throughout a large geographical travel-to-work area.
What about areas further afield, such as the Highlands? How will they benefit from this scheme? People from the Highlands who make occasional visits to Edinburgh or Glasgow to shop at Christmas time would have to pay to enter those cities. How will their transport networks be improved? How will they get additional resources through this scheme, if at all?
In my general comments I stressed that there were large areas of Scotland for which this kind of scheme would not be practicable and asked how they would be able to fund infrastructure improvements. The question Mr Gibson asks about people from the Highlands travelling to Edinburgh is difficult to answer. Perhaps we should suggest that people shop in the Highlands.
Perhaps they should, but there is not quite the range of shopping facilities there as there is in the major conurbations.
I am not so sure about that.
Having been on holiday in the Highlands for the past four years, I can tell you that transport is one of the reasons that I will not over the next four years be holidaying in that part of the United Kingdom.
I am the only person who has a copy of the paper that Kenny Gibson is referring to. I do not know quite how it came into my hands, as it is a parliamentary paper. What was the page reference?
Page 19. It is the third line of the fourth paragraph.
It is precisely that spirit that COSLA supports. We want to work with the Executive on that. If we are talking about confronting road users with the cost of their actions, we must underpin that with a national awareness campaign about why we need the Transport (Scotland) Bill, why we need partnerships to come together and why we cannot carry on as we are. We understand that there will be a Scottish travel awareness campaign, but we have not had much information about what it will consist of.
Mr Gibson mentioned confronting motorists, but we would like to address the wider community. Cyclists, people who use public transport and pedestrians are also road users. They are omitted from the bill, which is only about motoring. There are many road users. We must address the wider communities that use our roads.
I want to shift the questioning on to capital funding. "Guidance on provisional Local Transport Plans—advice by the Commission for Integrated Transport" states:
Capital allocations to local authorities have reduced. The Executive has priorities in education and social work, which most local authorities are following, and that leads to a further reduction. I am well aware that local authorities tend to build up their transport capital piecemeal, through challenge funding and a variety of other funding mechanisms.
It would be easy for COSLA to provide committee members with more detail from across Scotland of the backlog in infrastructure maintenance that has resulted from the capital programmes being tightened. The committee would find it horrendous reading. I know we have when we have received such reports.
If you indicate to me, I will write down who wishes to speak.
To continue what Walter MacLellan said, we do not have statistics for the whole of Scotland, but £60 million is required in Dumfries and Galloway to bring the local network up to an acceptable condition and £17 million is required in Glasgow. In the Borders, bridges are crumbling, which is affecting communities around them similarly to a school closure. In the Borders, £7 million is required right now to make roads safe. That is one of the most important aspects. Safety is crucial. Sarah Boyack announced that she has upped the cash for trunk roads from £80 million to £169 million, but local authorities are struggling with the wider roads network to keep things as they are at the moment. Things need to change and they need to change quickly.
I will return to a point that Councillor Magee made about rural roads being in difficulty and the economic impact of roads. Between Howwood and Lochwinnoch, which is where I live, there is a single-lane road over a weak bridge. I know of a farmer whose life is interrupted because of that. People are in conflict over who should pay for it.
It comes down to whatever meets the need. We are not in favour of statutory partnerships; we would like to see voluntary partnerships. There may be a statutory partnership in the Highlands and Islands. That will bring funding and other implications with it. We would not like in the Highlands and Islands some kind of glorified joint board that could simply requisition money from its partners; there must be a more inclusive and positive approach.
I raised with Calum Macdonald how to fit in certain authorities. I am thinking in particular about Dumfries and Galloway, which does not have a major link with a city, but which would probably have to tie in with Strathclyde in some way. You must remember that partnerships also have to link with neighbours, and that some of those neighbours are not in Scotland—Belfast, for example. A city is a crucial element in tying together successful partnerships and there are some areas of Scotland where that will be difficult.
I have a quick supplementary. From my own experience, I understand what you say about boards requisitioning money. Do you have any thoughts on what the funding mechanism might be for such a partnership, which could be applied to other parts of Scotland?
That is one of the main problems that have made people in the Highlands and Islands rather cautious. They broadly welcome the opportunity to have a greater say in, and greater co-ordination of, strategy but as with all these things there is the need for the funding to go with it. There is no doubt that talk of strategies and integrated transport has raised public expectations of better quality services across the board, but that comes at a cost.
Two things are needed: first, it is necessary to examine how the organisation of the partnerships is to be funded; and secondly, there is the issue of the methods by which the partnerships will be able to front load projects. Almost all transport projects, even when they are private partnerships, need public sector front loading to get them off the ground. Those are two issues that have to be addressed by the Scottish Executive.
I sympathise with the short time you have had to consider this—I received it only on Saturday.
We have touched on them in our general comments. The bill contains a great deal of detail about buses and motorists. Is a UK rail bill not going through at the moment? It is a rather selective bill. We would like it to be broadened out to cover all transport users and for a more integrated approach to be taken.
Would you include walking and cycling?
Absolutely. There is the safety argument.
I was going to mention that. There seems to be something lacking—some members of COSLA have approached us on this—on road safety. There was an opportunity, perhaps, to include making footway parking illegal and for more initiatives on walking and cycling, such as making the construction of cycleways and the like more easy to implement.
The danger in this question is that I will upset my colleagues from Glasgow. It is about the current structures of transport authorities. I will again use local knowledge and discuss the Strathclyde Passenger Transport Authority as it affects my area in Lanarkshire. There is a perception—I do not know whether it is true—that the SPTA is too Glasgow-centric. Does COSLA have a view on that? Does a problem genuinely exist or is it just a perception? Would a Lanarkshire passenger transport organisation be more beneficial than the regional one that we have at the moment?
I will pass you straight to my colleague from Glasgow.
I should declare an interest. As vice-chair of Strathclyde Passenger Transport and the chair of the services committee that deals with subsidised bus services among everything else, I can assure Mr McMahon that 90 per cent of my time is taken up with service provision outwith the city of Glasgow.
I return briefly to the previous question about omissions from the bill. We feel that a national transport context is missing in which the bill could be set. We have dwelt on the importance of trunk roads as part of that, which are not included in the bill. Anyone who travels on an integrated basis would also need to use rail and ferries. That should be considered.
You talk about the national context. I wonder whether the Executive acknowledges the different transport issues that exist throughout Scotland. In my constituency, the big problem is the M77. No matter how efficient and effective a main corridor such as that is for people who are travelling, the people who live next to it face consequences for their health.
We have concerns about the fare concessions in the bill. Trond Haugen may want to say something about them. Concerns are also being expressed by various councils—this enlarges on what Walter MacLellan said about there being a patchwork rather than a network—that there are situations in which access to buses is not desirable. We are not convinced that quality partnerships are going to redress that. I shall allow my colleagues to address those concerns, as they are better informed on the matter.
We are concerned that, although quality contracts could help to improve the network and could address the issues of fares and frequencies, they represent an awfully cumbersome procedure. It will take 21 months for the measures to be implemented, and all the options must be assessed. Essentially, we have to prove an awful lot before we are allowed to move on to quality contracts.
Is it COSLA's position that we should move straight to contracts, avoiding quality partnerships altogether?
We are pleased that we will not have to go through quality partnerships as was originally envisaged. However, to get to quality contracts, we must prove why policies cannot be implemented in any other way. It is such a long time scale; after 21 months the circumstances might have changed, so the initial aim might no longer be appropriate.
I have one simple point to add: the bus companies that serve the Pollok constituency have signed up to quality partnerships.
Thank you. I am sure that Johann Lamont will be delighted by that point.
The Scottish Executive and the Westminster Government often set out targets, either in bills or statements. They say that child poverty or hospital waiting times will be reduced by X amount in Y years. Do you think that including such targets in the bill would be helpful? One could envisage targets to reverse the decline in bus passenger miles, to reduce the amount of urban air pollution or to decrease the number of accidents. Does COSLA have a view on whether setting targets is helpful or is the rhubarb of public affairs?
We have some reservations about targets. Transport strategies already have aims and targets and there are strategies for monitoring air quality and greenhouse gas emissions. If targets were to be introduced, we would expect them to apply across the range of transport and not just to those aspects for which local authorities have responsibility.
The Road Traffic Reduction Act 1997 imposes targets for traffic reduction on local authorities. However, trunk roads are exempted. If the bill took that approach to target setting, realistically, local authorities could not be expected to live up to it. Local authorities could reasonably be asked to set targets for their local transport strategy and for regional transport strategies, but I think that that could be done only if the Executive came in as a partner and set comparable targets for its part of the network.
You certainly have this line about partnership with the Executive very clear. You have been well briefed and are much more together than some of our lot sometimes are.
We have also tried to achieve geographical inclusion, Mr Gorrie.
With regard to the question of the formula for hypothecation and additionality, some local authorities want to ensure that their transport spending is not reduced. In England, the money has been ring-fenced for 10 years, but that does not appear to have happened with this bill. Are you happy with that?
I think that we are, yes. We would like hypothecation to be guaranteed and the money to be additional. However, I return to my point that there are local authorities that will not benefit from that. A way needs to be found to get investment into their areas. Transport is becoming an important issue across the whole country. It is moving up the agenda.
I will enlighten Kenny Gibson on the problems that he had with congestion charging. Trondheim has gone ahead with the scheme and it is working fairly well there, I believe. Bristol, Rome, Genoa and Copenhagen are all on board as well. That shows that we would not be out on a limb if we introduced the scheme in Edinburgh.
We must consider the upfront costs. While we may get a revenue stream at some point down the line, it will cost money to get things moving. Money needs to be fed in, presumably from the Executive, to pump-prime projects and get some public transport alternatives in place in advance. That is quite a challenge. Local government will not be able to do anything with the proposals unless there is upfront funding.
It is vital that the Executive encourage the private sector to assist at the start to enable us to get things such as park-and-ride schemes in place before we try to do anything about getting money from the public.
Park-and-ride schemes need land. I do not know whether land is available in some areas in Glasgow. I recognise what you say about Trondheim, but what Councillor MacLellan said earlier is true: if Glasgow had congestion charging, people would go to the Olympia centre in East Kilbride as well as Braehead and other surrounding areas.
A lot can be done for small businesses as part of such bus priority measures. I can give the example of initiatives that are beginning to be implemented in Edinburgh. The greenways scheme has been at the forefront of much criticism from small businesses.
Thank you very much. You have given us lots of information over the past hour or so. This is stage 1 of the bill, and one of the reasons we and you got the bill very late is that the Transport and the Environment Committee has to report before the recess, which starts at the beginning of July.
Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you, convener.