Meeting of the Parliament 11 September 2024
Last October, we introduced the ScotRail peak fares removal pilot, supported by £40 million in Government funding. It was a bold and pioneering initiative, which was only possible due to the Government’s bringing ScotRail under public sector control, which has not been done with railways elsewhere in the UK as yet. We initiated the pilot to achieve two objectives: to encourage more people to choose to travel by train rather than by car, especially at peak commuter times, and to make rail travel more affordable and accessible.
On Tuesday 20 August, Transport Scotland published its full analysis of the pilot. I encourage members to read it if they have not already done so. The analysis shows that, although there was a limited increase in the number of passengers during the pilot, at the ultimate level of 6.8 per cent, the pilot did not achieve its original aim of encouraging a significant modal shift from car to rail. The analysis suggests that around four million extra rail journeys were made during the pilot, two million of which would previously have been made by private car. However, that is in the context of around five billion annual private car journeys in Scotland, and it represents a reduction of less than 0.1 per cent of car-based carbon emissions.
Of the new rail passengers who were identified as switching from other transport modes, 54 per cent had previously used a car as a driver and a third had switched from using a bus. The evidence also suggests that the pilot primarily benefited existing rail users, who tended to be of above-average income.
The First Minister set out the Government’s priorities in his programme for government on 4 September. Due to 14 years of austerity—which was driven by the previous Conservative Westminster Government and is being continued by the current Labour Government—sky-high inflation and the failure of Westminster Governments to increase budgets adequately to address inflation, we have to make difficult decisions to address those circumstances.