Meeting of the Parliament 12 November 2025
Scottish Green MSPs believe that everyone in Scotland deserves to benefit from affordable, accessible and reliable transport, including from their local bus services. Having access to better buses has hugely positive impacts on people’s lives, helping everyone to access education and work opportunities, to be connected to vital local and national services and to connect with one another. It also plays a role in addressing the climate crisis, because it encourages us all to leave the car at home and cut climate pollution.
However, people across Scotland still struggle with the affordability and accessibility of public transport, especially buses. Over the past decade, the cost of bus travel has risen by more than 60 per cent, which is faster than the rate of wages and the cost of living. Those fare increases put significant financial strain on families across Scotland and disproportionately impact people on low incomes, women and people from minority ethnic communities, as they are more likely to rely on the bus.
However, it does not have to be that way. The Scottish Greens have continuously fought to make public transport more affordable, accessible and reliable, which has included delivering free bus travel for all under-22s in Scotland from January 2022 and working constructively with the Government on successive budget deals. Three years on, we can see just how successful that scheme has been: since its roll-out, more than 250 million journeys have been made and there were over 800,000 cardholders as of June. I live with two of them at home. In my region, the scheme has been taken up by just over 100,000 young people, which has resulted in some 26.5 million journeys.