Seòmar agus comataidhean

I do not have time, unfortunately.

Choices need to be made. I ask the minister to reflect on the construction of the cross-Tay link road: £120 million is being invested in that transport infrastructure to benefit motorists. However, there are already starting to be congestion issues around Perth and Bridgend, which that bridge was meant to resolve.

We need to move away from going one step forward and one step back. We need to address the issues.

This is not a new debate. Back in 2006, the first ever climate inquiry in this Parliament recommended road user charging. It set the Executive a timescale of 10 years to get it right—the Executive had until 2016 to bring in a fair system of road user charging. That date has passed and we are now nearly 10 years on from 2016—it is nearly 2026 and we still have no more progress in Scotland on road user charging.

It will take calm heads and cross-party working in order to make progress on this. Perhaps it will take the kind of leadership that was shown by Douglas Lumsden when he was a councillor: behaving rationally, taking your party-political hat off and looking at the issues that need to be addressed. We see that kind of leadership in councils from time to time. The conversation with COSLA is really important because it is clear that there are those in local authorities who need, and want, to tackle traffic congestion using a range of measures.

I urge the Government to make progress in areas in which there is consensus. A regulatory review is looking at powers of road charging. We could be looking at simplifying the traffic regulation order process or decriminalising road offences. I think that there are areas of consensus among councils and the Government that we can use to make progress.

I welcome the minister’s support for the re-regulation of buses. I would urge him to make that process as simple as possible. It is clear that we need public transport to be run in the public interest, and we can only really achieve that if we have public and community operators in that mix.

This is a short debate, but I am sure that we will come back to this subject between now and the end of the parliamentary session.

It is clear that there is no war on the motorist, and it is a bit silly to suggest that there is. However, I absolutely think that, every single day, motorists face congestion misery on our roads, so we should be tackling congestion. We can do that only when the costs of public transport fall relative to those of the private car and when better reliability, punctuality and frequency make bus and rail the natural choice for commuters, where they have that choice available.

Facts are really important in this debate. I ask members to reflect on the fact that, since the Parliament was established, the number of cars on the roads has increased by 38 per cent and mileage has gone up by 16 per cent, while the cost of motoring has decreased by 19 per cent, rail fares have increased by 31 per cent and bus and coach fares have risen by an eye-watering 102 per cent in real terms. It is clear that successive Governments have prioritised car dependency, and that people who choose or rely on public transport are continually being disadvantaged by Government policy.

Transport is the biggest climate polluter, and private cars pollute the most. Actions are needed to reduce private car usage and demand—otherwise, other parts of our economy will have to pick up more of the burden in getting to net zero. A traffic reduction target, backed by deliverable actions, is needed now more than ever. Dropping the 20 per cent target is a real backwards step that sends out the wrong message, removes the focus and undermines the partnership action that is needed on the ground to prioritise public transport and active travel.

We have been subject to a blizzard of local press releases and election pitches this afternoon. I agree with Paul Sweeney that the motion that we are debating is somewhat “facile and disingenuous”. We need a more measured debate on the subject. I ask the minister to acknowledge that, on transport policy, we are taking one step forward at a time and then, often, one step back.

I give the example of bus use. Free bus travel for under-22s is a fantastic scheme and I know that the minister backs it. He recognises the benefit that it has brought to young people. It has also increased bus use by 29 million journeys. However, at the same time as we have been rolling out that successful scheme, we have seen bus journeys decline by 20 million because of road congestion and the failure to tackle traffic congestion, which we are discussing this afternoon. That is undermining the hundreds of millions of pounds that have been invested in bus users and the bus network every year.

We need to see what, back in the day, was called policy coherence—that is, where one policy is not undermining another one. We cannot have a transport policy based only on having more of everything that everybody wants. Choices have to be made. That is why we have a transport hierarchy and it should be guiding investment. When the Confederation of Passenger Transport Scotland gave evidence to the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee this week, it stated clearly that competition from cars was the primary influence on bus use. Unless we tackle that issue and level the playing field, we will not see a rapid increase in bus use.

I ask the minister to reflect on what Duncan Cameron from FirstGroup told Parliament just yesterday. He said that dropping the 20 per cent target represents a huge missed opportunity. There was an opportunity for partnership action and to have a clear focus.

Targets without measurable actions are doomed to fail. Despite the fact that a draft route map to reduce congestion was published jointly with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities three years ago, the plan is yet to be agreed. When the plan comes back to COSLA at the end of this week, it will be gutted and all the meaningful action will be taken out of it. All the actions that local authorities such as the City of Edinburgh Council and Glasgow City Council want to put in place to start to tackle congestion and deliver investment will be left out of the plan.

We need to reflect on the fact that progress on road charging has been absolutely non-existent in Scotland. We are 22 years on from the introduction of the congestion charge in London, which is now just accepted as part of everyday life and which raises significant revenue for public transport investment. It is time to support local authorities that want to introduce road user charging, such as those in Edinburgh and Glasgow.

Okay—very briefly.

If there is time in hand, I would welcome that.

David Frenz, do you have a comment on that?

Yes, if there are more people on the buses, there might be a proportionate rise in antisocial behaviour.

I will ask one person one question. I want to go very briefly to David Frenz. I sense that there is a bit of anxiety around EV coach range at the moment, but Ember is running electric coach services from Edinburgh to Fort William four times a day and the same up to Dundee. Are we not at a point where EV coaches are there and available and it is only a matter of time before all operators take them up?

So, in effect, some staff who are currently working at fully staffed stations will move to staff stations that are unstaffed at the moment.