Meeting of the Parliament 17 May 2023
I have a lot to get through, so I will not take the intervention.
Improving bus journey times and reliability will contribute to high-quality bus services and shorter journey times, encouraging motorists out of their cars and on to buses. That is why we are investing in bus priority infrastructure through our bus partnership fund. Awards totalling £26 million in bus priority funding have already been made to 11 partnerships, covering 28 local authorities.
It is not just how buses run that is changing with the powers that local authorities now have under the Transport (Scotland) Act 2019 and with further secondary legislation to enable bus franchising and partnership working that is being introduced later this year. It is also about what is changing in relation to the buses themselves.
Removing carbon emissions from our transport sector is critical to meeting Scotland’s ambitious climate targets. Since December 2020, we have directly supported the acquisition of 548 new zero-emission buses, and we are supporting charging infrastructure across Scotland. This week, I launched phase 2 of the Scottish zero-emission bus challenge, which will transform the market to deliver a zero-emission future for buses.