Chamber and committees

Including in this financial year? Absolutely.

I will answer, then I may bring in officials.

There are a number of elements to the ICP. The long-term plan for vessels and ports was published at the end of last year. There will also be elements on the community needs assessment, on fares policy, on connecting and onward travel and on the low-carbon plan. Those are the sections of the ICP.

I expect to receive advice from Transport Scotland in the coming weeks in relation to the deadline and timescales to which we are working, and I am happy to share updates on that with the committee.

The final ICP will be relatively short, as an introductory document to that ring-binder approach, which I have agreed with Transport Scotland. That gives a more iterative process and allows us to be more reflective as an organisation—to change things when we need to change them. In the past, we may not have been as reflective and as constructive in that respect, because we have been quite static in our approach to policy development and to how that is implemented on the ground.

In relation to your second question, we prioritised the publication of the long-term plan. As I mentioned, an advance copy of that draft was published, on 30 December—I recall reading it between Christmas and new year. That is a working draft. It is important that we now get stakeholder feedback on that draft.

I go back to the point that I made to the convener at the start of the session: I do not want to foist on island communities something that they do not want. A further version of the draft is now being prepared in light of some of the feedback that we have already had. The plan is to commence public consultation in April, I think—officials will correct me if I am wrong.

The ICP and associated delivery parts, which I outlined at the start of my answer, will be supported by impact assessments, too. The majority of Transport Scotland’s work on the ICP and those chapters within it will be completed during 2023 but, as I have said, I await its further advice on the full timetable for the sections that I have updated Mr Ruskell on.

Following on from Chris Wilcock’s point about consultation, I would say that it is not just for Transport Scotland to go out and consult island communities; I would expect CalMac and CMAL—as they do, routinely—to go out and do the same. There is, as I think that you heard Mr Hobbs say in the previous evidence session, a role for all organisations in the tripartite arrangement to build on that consultation.

Mr Ruskell makes a number of important points. If I am honest, the scheme started off with a number of challenges. You may recall that I was first appointed at the time of the onset of the omicron variant of Covid and that there were challenges in relation to the application process. I worked with the Improvement Service, which we had appointed to run the scheme on behalf of the Scottish ministers to improve and streamline the application process. That was important, because it helped to increase the number of applicants, as did the marketing campaign that we launched later in the year.

As Mr Ruskell said, there have been more than 45 million journeys, and 62 per cent of the children and young people who are eligible are benefiting—I would like that number to be higher, incidentally. I receive regular updates from Transport Scotland, which show the national picture and give me a granular breakdown at local authority level.

It is fair to say that some local authorities are doing better than others, so I have asked my officials in Transport Scotland to work with local authorities that might be struggling with the sign-up to ensure that they are using all the opportunities at their disposal. For example, young people do not have to apply online; they can apply via their local authority. There is also the schools accelerated process, which is used by certain local authorities. I will pick on Glasgow City Council, which used the schools accelerated process in a really dynamic way that allowed it to increase uptake right at the start of the scheme, which was very welcome.

In relation to the evaluation that Mr Ruskell asked about, there will be a one-year evaluation of the scheme, which I think will begin in April this year. It will look not only at the data that Mr Ruskell has outlined but at the change in young people’s travel habits. We are really changing the next generation’s approach to travelling by bus, which is transformative and hugely important. It is therefore important that we get that data, and I would be more than happy to share the data with committee members when the evaluation is complete.

I think that we will expect to set a cap for future years. I get regular updates from my officials in Transport Scotland that look at patronage across the transport network—on rail, bus and road. Obviously, unfortunately, road use has returned to where we were prior to the pandemic. Rail and bus patronage remain depressed—I think that the level sits at between 60 per cent and 70 per cent for both—so there is a challenge with regard to the forecasting that Transport Scotland was able to carry out and, to be blunt, that it has been able to carry out for two-and-a-bit years. Therefore, in relation to Ms Lennon’s question, yes, in future years, we absolutely will have to reintroduce a cap.

There is no cap for the young persons scheme this year, and there was not one last year, because of uncertainty and because we did not yet have the data to measure it against. I think that we now have a full year of data, but we need a bigger data set to measure it against in the future. However, it is a fair point, and we need to look at that.

It is worth saying that Transport Scotland is looking at providing an evaluation specifically on the approach that we take to the cap and the reimbursement rate. The approach that we take has been used since 2013; it is an agreed economic model. Gary McIntyre might want to say a bit more about the calculation. It was agreed with bus operators, which is important, and the approach ensures that they are neither better off nor worse off as a result of the reimbursement rate that is set.

Perhaps Gary McIntyre or Debbie Walker would like to provide more information.

Mr Kerr hits on an important point. I spent a lot of time over the summer recess meeting operators. If you meet representatives of the likes of Stagecoach and FirstBus, you get very different feedback to what you get from smaller operators who are, arguably, experiencing much more challenging times at the moment. I am mindful of that, particularly in rural areas, where people might not have access to, for example, the rail network. It is really important that bus services are maintained in areas where the rail network is not able to extend.

I might bring in officials on the specifics of the question. If that issue is not already being considered in the evaluation, I will request that it is, because Mr Kerr makes an important point. Operators are currently dealing with a range of factors and challenges such as driver shortages and the cost of fuel, so one of the reasons why I have convened the bus task force is to get folk round the table to come up with solutions to move us forward. The evaluation will give us an opportunity to ensure that we have the data from rural areas, which is particularly important in relation to Mr Kerr’s point about poverty.

The budget should be sufficient, based on the modelling. It assumes that patronage levels will recover to 80 per cent of what they were prior to the pandemic, so it is dependent on passenger behaviour, bluntly, but that would certainly measure up with what officials have forecast in relation to people returning to bus.

The other thing to reflect on is that people’s travel habits have dramatically changed, so this is not only about bringing people back to public transport. Some people do not go to a workplace anymore; they work from home. That has changed the nature of public transport in Scotland. However, I think that we are still in a bit of a pre-pandemic cycle, whereby the delivery model that we currently have across public transport networks reflects provision that existed prior to the pandemic. We need to think again about some of our delivery models when people are often working from home during the week, because that changes what the patronage uptick is. In answer to your question, the budget should be sufficient but it assumes an 80 per cent return of patronage.

No; quite.

Pricing of fares is regularly raised with me. RET has been successful, and since its introduction there has been a substantial increase in the number of vehicles and passengers travelling on the network. It is now more than 5 million; it certainly was in 2019, the last comparable pre-pandemic year.

It also true that RET has reduced the average fare by 34 per cent for passengers and 40 per cent for car traffic, which is important. As I mentioned in an earlier response, it saves travellers around £25 million a year. However, I am keen that we use the ICP to consult island communities on their views on dynamic pricing. It is a fair observation.

I read in the Official Report of the committee’s previous evidence session that Mr Drummond, I think, was looking at that approach. As Ms Dunbar outlines, it is used in other transport sectors, so we need to be live to it.

I go back to my guiding principle from the start of the evidence session, which is that anything that we do next has to be informed by islanders’ views. We will not foist something on island communities. If more dynamic pricing is what they would like and would opt for, which would move us away from the current structure, I am amenable to that.

That is under consideration. As I outlined in my response to Mr Ruskell, a key part of the ICP will be the chapter on onward and connecting travel. We are looking for that to be completed internally in the first half of 2023, and there will then be stakeholder engagement.

Ms Dunbar is absolutely right that we need to ensure that there are more joined-up approaches to our broader transport network. There are already great examples of that in the transport network. I was in discussions with officials about that very point yesterday. In places such as Oban, for example, there is fantastic connectivity between ferry and rail, but that does not exist everywhere. We have that in other parts of the network, but we need to consider where we can build in opportunities to connect people’s journeys, because otherwise we are never going to facilitate the modal shift to get people out of their cars.

In response to Ms Lennon’s question about our net zero targets, we know that the transport sector is a significant contributor to our emissions, and we absolutely recognise the need to join things up better, whether that be through shared hubs or other approaches that exist in other parts of Scotland.