Committee
Edinburgh Tram (Line One) Bill Committee and Edinburgh Tram (Line Two) Bill Committee (Joint Meeting), 23 Sep 2004
23 Sep 2004 · S2 · Edinburgh Tram (Line One) Bill Committee
Item of business
Edinburgh Tram (Line One) Bill and Edinburgh Tram (Line Two) Bill: Preliminary Stage
Keith Holden:
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No. We tend not to take that approach. We start by saying, "Okay, the Government has invested this amount of money in this particular activity. Has it achieved its objectives? If not, why not? If it has achieved them, how did it achieve them?"Your first question was about the key features and success factors of light rail. From my perspective, as the director of this particular piece of work, I would say that the key thing is to attract passengers. If you do not attract passengers, you will fail. It is as simple as that. The question then is how to make a light rail system as attractive as possible to passengers, to encourage them to get out of their cars. Altering people's behaviour is very difficult. Instead of walking out the door in the morning and getting into the car—which might be air-conditioned in the summer and nice and warm in the winter—people would have to walk to the nearest light rail stop. You therefore have to work very hard to make light rail at least as attractive as the car, but ideally more attractive.How can that be done? You have to make the services fast and frequent, as you do not want people to be standing around stations for 10 minutes, 20 minutes or half an hour. That would be disastrous, because people would walk away. You have to make the services punctual and reliable. They have to get people from A to B as quickly as possible.
In the same item of business
The Convener (Bill Aitken):
Con
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to this joint meeting of the Edinburgh Tram (Line One) Bill Committee and the Edinburgh Tram (Line Two) Bill Co...
Keith Holden (National Audit Office):
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I am the National Audit Office director responsible for transport value-for-money studies. Stewart Lingard is an audit ...
Stewart Lingard (National Audit Office):
The two issues that we tried to address in our study were, first, whether light rail systems in England deliver sustainable benefits at the expected cost and...
The Convener:
Lab
Thank you very much for that presentation. Do you have anything to add, Mr Holden?
Keith Holden:
No. We are happy to take questions from members.
Stewart Stevenson (Banff and Buchan) (SNP):
SNP
To save time, I will ask my two questions together. In this study or in other studies, have you been able to tease out the particular benefits that light rai...
The Convener:
Lab
Two questions, gentlemen; two replies please.
Keith Holden:
I will take the questions in reverse order. The work that we did was not a comparative value-for-money study; we did not compare light rail with alternative ...
Stewart Stevenson:
SNP
Have you done it in any other study?
Keith Holden:
No. We tend not to take that approach. We start by saying, "Okay, the Government has invested this amount of money in this particular activity. Has it achiev...
Stewart Stevenson:
SNP
Have you engaged with customers and non-customers in the areas where light rail systems have been implemented, to determine their attitude to using or not us...
Keith Holden:
No. We drew on evaluation studies of passenger satisfaction, passenger numbers and so on that were carried out by the Department for Transport, various local...
Michael Matheson (Central Scotland) (SNP):
SNP
In your presentation, you stated that light rail systems"encouraged a shift from car use".Would you expand on what you mean by that?
Stewart Lingard:
As I tried to say, of the different modes of public transport—buses, trolleybuses, underground or light rail—light rail seemed to us to be the mode of transp...
Keith Holden:
Mr Matheson is probably trying to draw out of Stewart Lingard a recognition that the Government has to some extent tried to encourage a shift from car to lig...
Michael Matheson:
SNP
From your examination of the schemes that are operating in England, have you been able to identify the number of car users who have transferred to the light ...
Keith Holden:
We did not cover that specifically in the report.
Stewart Lingard:
Some analysis of the transfer of people from buses and cars to light rail has been done in Manchester, Sheffield and Croydon. Each study showed quite large s...
Phil Gallie (South of Scotland) (Con):
Con
I am interested in what you said about Manchester, as that is the only scheme in which passenger numbers are up and it seems the most financially viable case...
Keith Holden:
We do not have any details about that, as that decision was made subsequent to the work that we did on our report. From what I have read in newspapers, I wou...
Phil Gallie:
Con
My impression is that many of the light rail systems tend to help city centres. However, will that not result in the reverse of the objective, because people...
Keith Holden:
Potentially. One of the key things that we concluded was that light rail is not a panacea. By itself, it is not enough. It needs to be seen within the contex...
Phil Gallie:
Con
One of the NAO's objectives is to encourage further use of light rail systems. If that is the case, do you encourage the use of circular routes in city centr...
Keith Holden:
I do not think that we have a specific view on whether a closed loop is good, bad or indifferent. The better way of looking at it is to make sure that the ri...
The Convener:
Lab
Jamie Stone has a question on that point.
Mr Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD):
LD
It is a separate point.
The Convener:
Lab
Carry on then.
Mr Stone:
LD
You talked about the possible use of heavy rail. By definition, I would have thought that trams were like buses and Mrs Mackenzie might take a wee bit of tim...
Keith Holden:
Sorry—
Mr Stone:
LD
If we put a tram on heavy rail, and a tram cannot stick bang on to a 10-minute schedule because there are bound to be delays, is there not a chance that a bi...