Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 22 September 2021
An anecdote is attributed to one of my predecessors as a representative of Shetland, Jo Grimond, who when asked to name his closest railway station, would say, “Bergen”. I cannot say that I am not jealous of colleagues who are able to hop on the train and return to their constituencies after a day or a week here. Instead, I am more used to flight safety demonstrations and gate changes than staying behind the yellow line and platform announcements.
As the motion points out, today is world car-free day; it is a tricky task for people who live in an area that geographically challenges public transport, but we must do more to break the reliance on cars for short journeys and we should ensure that every part of Scotland has an excellent local transport system and good links to the rest of the country. We must also make public transport sustainable if we are to see any benefit for our planet.
In 2015, transport became Scotland’s single largest source of greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for more than a third of them. Progress has been made in other sectors, such as electricity, but transport has not budged. In 2018, 48.7 billion vehicle-kilometres were travelled by road—up 10 per cent in a decade. By 2037, Transport Scotland modelling forecasts a 25 per cent increase in car trips and a 44 per cent increase in goods vehicle trips. If we cut rail timetables, we certainly have no chance of changing that situation, and we do not have a chance of meeting our climate change targets unless transport is rapidly decarbonised.
Meanwhile, delays and dissatisfaction have beset the current Abellio ScotRail setup. People are so frustrated that, for the first time in decades, the number of people who used rail pre-pandemic went down, and delay-repay compensation to passengers nearly doubled in the space of just two years. If our railways face cuts—including, potentially, to the workforce—we need a commitment to greater investment and fair treatment for workers. We support driving up improvements to services, and performance improvements can be made through stronger protections for passengers.
The next chapter for rail services needs to deliver more for passengers, and we need governance that will deliver those services from day one. For the future of rail, we would like to see a system that recognises post-pandemic patterns of travel, takes into account local input and is accountable to passengers. We would like to see more freight moved on to railways to reduce congestion and pollution, and a move away from fossil fuels on the network towards electric power, batteries and hydrogen. We embrace the opportunity to run railways better through taking the best of the UK Government’s Williams review, such as simplified modern ticketing.
With passengers in mind, we can attract more people on to trains and out of their cars, all of which would help to accelerate action to tackle the climate emergency, and to meet the tougher target of a 75 per cent emissions reduction by 2030, which was put into Scottish law after work by the Scottish Liberal Democrats.
We call on the Scottish ministers to commit to an affordable, clean, green, reliable, expanded and modern railway, with overall journeys maintained, that is accountable to passengers. Empty, polluting, ageing trains do not benefit anyone. Change is needed now for our rail service.
15:45