This event was chaired by Neil Johnstone, Vice-president, CIHT and featured contributions from Alison Irvine FCIHT, Director of Transport Strategy and Analysis, Transport Scotland, Daisy Narayanan, Director of Urbanism, Sustrans, and Paul White, Director, Scotland, Confederation of Passenger Transport.

Key discussion areas included:

• Scotland’s National Transport Strategy and just how the priorities identified in it have become even more important now after the pandemic.  
• Pop-up active travel infrastructure is only a stepping-stone to achieving more active travel. It will take more work and increased funding to truly embed active travel.  
• Public transport has been suffering during the pandemic and while there are times when it is important to reduce the amount people travel by it, those in charge of communicating about public transport need to consider what the long-term impacts for public transport are of messages that make public transport seem like a very dangerous travel mode.  

Addressing a question on the role of the Scottish National Transport Strategy and Delivery Plan in reacting to COVID-19, Alison Irvine said:  

“The priorities identified in the National Transport Strategy are more important now than ever. Those priorities are about reducing inequalities which have been exacerbated during COVID, taking climate action because of the risks of the differential impacts on public transport versus car use, improving health and wellbeing because we are likely to see long term health impacts as a result of the COVID pandemic and help deliver inclusive economic growth – given the impact of the restrictions on our economy.”

Speaking on the rapid-engineering pop-up active travel infrastructure, Daisy Narayanan said:  

“The guiding principles are about protecting public health and responding to local need and ensuring that measures are inclusive and work for everyone, but quick action comes with its own issues as we’ve seen with some schemes currently on the ground. Cones, wands and planters may help in creating additional space in the short-term but they can only be a stepping stone towards well thought through and truly co-designed infrastructure. Over the next couple of years we need a comprehensive programme of infrastructure investment. This needs to include further road-space reallocation.”  

Paul White on the decline in bus patronage said:  

“Public transport patronage has been on a decline even before the pandemic and one of the drivers of that has been congestion. There is a cycle of decline where congestion slows down the buses and makes them less punctual, which increases operational costs and that is reflected in fares. That has been identified in the National Transport Strategy and one of the challenges has been getting buy-in from local authorities and key decision-makers to tackle congestion and make tough choices around road-space allocation. During COVID there has been an acceleration towards making those choices around road space allocation. We have now seen the evidence of what that does to journey times for buses and need to lock that in, we can’t lose that to cars coming back to the roads.”

Additional resources relating to the subjects raised at this webinar were:

Transport Scotland, Transport Transition Plan 
Transport Scotland, National Transport Strategy 2

For those that attended the event, a copy of the webinar recording can be found here

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