Meeting of the Parliament 26 February 2025
For a moment, Presiding Officer, imagine yourself in the shoes of my constituent. You need to get to work. It is rush hour. You check the train price—it is way more expensive than off peak and there is no flexipass option. You prefer the train: it is the right thing to do for the climate and it is less stressful than driving. You can catch up on emails or you can take a moment for yourself, and you do not have to worry about parking. It should be the easiest choice, but when rail fares keep rising, how are you supposed to afford that choice?
People in my region face that cost benefit dilemma weekly. A worker in Elgin has to pay £24 for a peak return, which is 52 per cent more than if they were travelling off-peak. A nurse in Oban going to training in Glasgow will pay £54, which is more than a third more than the off-peak alternative. How about a tourist staying in Aberdeen who wants to go to Inverness? To make a day trip worth it, they will have to pay £70, which is £32 more than the off-peak fare. In all those cases, Presiding Officer, you would hardly begrudge them driving, if they have the option, or not travelling at all.
Let us imagine the alternative. With affordable fares, more people travel, which means busier high streets, more customers in shops, cafes and businesses, and more access to jobs. If rail is reliable and affordable, people can take up work further afield without the financial pressure of running a car. There is also more tourism, as visitors can choose trains over rental cars, spreading tourism and spending beyond the central belt. More people using rail means more revenue to invest in infrastructure improvements. The bottom line is this: if we do not get more people on to public transport, we will not hit our climate targets. Audit Scotland has already said that Scotland is unlikely to meet its goal of cutting car use by 20 per cent by 2030. Why? Because we are not making rail a real alternative to driving.
Nowhere is that picture more stark than in the Highlands and Islands. Right now, the Highland main line is still mostly single track. That means that a journey from Inverness to Edinburgh can take more than three and a half hours, which is the same amount of time as in the Victorian era. Driving is faster. If we are serious about growing our economy, creating jobs and tackling climate change, we need to make fares affordable and improve journey times. Instead of supporting that, the Scottish Government is doing the opposite. It has brought back peak fares, which the Scottish Greens scrapped when we were in government, and it is hiking fares by 3.8 per cent in April.
The Government asks why more people are not choosing the train. The real question that it should be asking is: why are we making it harder for them? We need real action: no fare increases this year; a permanent end to peak-time rail fares; simple integrated ticketing across all public transport; electrification and dualling of the Highland main line and other lines so that trains can compete with driving; and investment to move freight on to rail.
Climate action is not about telling people what to do; it is about making the right choice—the easiest choice. Let us stop punishing the people who want to take the train and treating rail like a luxury when it should be the obvious affordable option. Let us get this right—not in five years, not after another price hike, but now.
16:28