 Welcome to the 27th meeting of 2017 of the Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee. Before we move to the first item on the agenda, can I remind everyone present to switch off mobile phones and other electronic devices as they may affect the broadcasting system? The first item on the agenda is for the committee to consider whether to take item 3 in private. Are we agreed? We are agreed. The second item of business today is to hear evidence from a panel of transport stakeholders in relation to the committee's inquiry into air quality in Scotland. Can I welcome Chris McRae, who's the head of policy at the Freight Transport Association, Phillip Matthews, the chair of Transform Scotland, Alex Quayle, senior policy officer for Sustrans and Paul White, the director of government relations at the Confederation of Passenger Transport UK. Gentleman, welcome. As you can imagine, members have a series of questions for you. We'll get straight into those. Kate Forbes. I'm just going to start with a very broad question and allow each of you to come in as to whether you think that the Scottish Government's work to date on air quality is adequate to meet legal requirements in the medium to long term. Who wants to kick off? Paul White. I think that the work so far is in the right direction. As you would imagine from my perspective, a key to meeting air quality targets through steps like low mission zones is through framing bus as an integral part of the solution to air quality rather than villainising it. I think there's more to be done in that and more to be done in unlocking the benefits that are associated with a strong comprehensive bus network. That may be through measures that you might not associate with air quality policy creating a stable framework of bus policy that allows operators the certainty to excel at investment and invest in new services. I'd like to talk about the air quality management areas. Whilst Cleaner Air for Scotland is a strong policy and has seen us move generally in the right direction, the fact that that has increased from 34 to 38 in the last year suggests that the direction of travel isn't yet going in the right direction. It is heartening that the consultation will look at air quality management... Sorry, the consultation for low mission zones will look at air quality management areas by 2023, but that is, as you say, a long term goal. Whilst the long term, I'm quite confident, short and medium term, there is room for progress. Phil Matthews. I agree with a lot of what's been said by the previous two speakers. I think it's welcome that we have an air quality strategy. I think the proposals in the low mission zones are welcome, but we think we could go further than that. We'd like to see one in every city with an AQMA present. We'd like to see that introduced as soon as possible. I think the commitment to the ending of the combustion engines by 2032 is welcome, but I still think electric vehicles and so on. That's a very challenging thing to roll out in terms of changing the fuel source for our vehicles on roads. I think underpinning all of this is a transport strategy, an overall approach to transport, which is predicated on still, despite what the transport strategy says, has resulted, rather, I should say, in a growth in car transport, inadequate funding for walking and cycling, and not really backing the transformational change that we need to see in terms of all the wider benefits, not just air quality, but public health and so on as well. In the medium to long term, I think some of the actions in the air quality strategy in the low mission zones proposals and so on are very welcome. I think we have to look in a much more strategic way at the overall investment in transport, what we're proposing in terms of different modes and so on, and how we incentivise people to choose more healthy and lower polluting forms of transport. Chris McRae. Yes, thank you. Obviously overall the direction is moving in the right way. I think we have obvious concerns about implications for freight and servicing of deliveries in Scotland's major cities. The emission standards from commercial vehicles is improving and will improve dramatically over time with the Euro 6 standards for heavy goods vehicles, also the standards for vans as well. But I think there's got to an element of time given for those benefits to actually filter through. Some of you have touched on this already, but do you feel that there's an adequate focus on active travel in the Cleaner Air for Scotland strategy? How would you develop it if not? Yes, I think the recent doubling of funding for active travel is very welcome. We're still seeing the vast majority of our transport spend on roads, 3 billion on the A9, 3 billion on the A96 upgrade and so on, whereas we're talking about 80 million for active travel. I think that's disappointing. What we'd like to see is moving towards a situation where 10% of the Scottish Government's transport budget is focused on active travel. Then I think you start seeing the real transformational change hopefully in our cities and in public health and other things as well as part of that. Yes, there has been progress. Yes, there's acknowledgement about the importance. Yes, we have a cycling strategy and a walking strategy and that's all good, but the cycling strategy sets a target of 10% cycling by 2020. I don't think anyone is claiming that we're actually going to meet that, 1% or 2% just now, so clearly we need to move a lot faster and in a lot more bold way than we're doing at present. We've got to promoting active travel within Cleaner Air for Scotland. I think part of the problem is Cleaner Air for Scotland is focused when it talks about transport, it talks more about different types of vehicles and it's not just about a different type of vehicle that pollutes less, it's also about having fewer vehicles in urban centres. Even if we are talking about electric vehicles, whilst they do have a fundamental role to play in future urban mobility, we'll still see particulate matter from the brakes and from tyres of which there's no safe limit. It's not just about making sure that we have vehicles that are polluting less, it's also about making sure that we are taking space within urban environments to give to people to walk and cycle so that it's safer for people to cycle so that more people will change their behaviour to a less polluting mode. So CAFs could do more to meet that problem head-on that there is a problem of too many vehicles in our urban areas. Last question in Director Paul White. What discussions has the CPT had with the Scottish Government in relation to evaluating and reinstating the bus investment fund and what impact has the reduction in the bus service operating grant on operations, operators grant on operations? The bus investment fund was a useful pot of money. I think it was £3 million a year over three years to kickstart infrastructure projects. That was, I think it came to a conclusion about two years ago and we were told there would be a report that followed to evaluate its success. I think in the first year it was hugely oversubscribed. I think there's some good ideas out there at the local authority level and with operators that money could have been put to good use but we're still awaiting that report. So it's frustrating in a way that we can't move forward with any innovative projects that you might have had an eye on progressing through that fund. With regards to the bus service operators grant there is a base rate of 14.4 pence per passenger kilometre and a top-up rate which was the same if your vehicle qualifies as a low-carbon vehicle that's been cut to 10.1 pence the top-up rate, the base rate remains the same. So that is, you could say that flies in the face of the work that is done through the green bus fund to incentivise operators to purchase low-carbon vehicles because on one hand you're incentivising them to purchase the vehicle and on the other hand you're saying there's so many of them we're going to have to cut the rate. So it makes it difficult for an operator to make that investment case for a low-carbon vehicle because you know the rate that you receive through BSOG is reduced. Can I just pick up on that point because one could argue that there has already been substantial public subsidy provided through the green bus fund and that you're actually in a way looking for a double subsidy of that. I'm not saying that's necessarily my view but you could argue that point. I guess that leads us on to the wider moral question about the extent to which the bus operators have a responsibility to behave in an environmentally responsible way and the extent to which the public purse has to incentivise them to do that. I would say that the green bus fund is up to 80% of the price differential between a standard vehicle and a low-carbon vehicle so the vast majority is still paid for by the operator and that's 80% at the maximum level. If you want to be a successful bidder for the green bus fund you probably have to pitch your bids lower than that 80%. So it's helpful but I think the green bus fund has incentivised the purchase of about 300 low-carbon vehicles through its span and that's about roughly half the number of low-carbon vehicles there are in Scotland so it's not the extent that operators are saying we're not going to invest in low-carbon vehicles unless it's through the green bus fund and the operators are continuously working to update their fleet but there's such a cost involved that especially when you have uncertainty over the larger framework of things like BSOG and the transport bill where your business might be branchised, without uncertainty it's difficult to make a case for accelerating that investment or you might choose to pause it even. Anybody else want to comment? I think overall the subsidies for buses are a very small percentage of the overall transport budget we've seen bus usership in Scotland decline quite significantly there's clearly a social justice aspect to that this is a lot of people in Scotland don't have access to a car and that is their main mode of travel so I think obviously you have to look at the detail of individual schemes but I think overall the money that's allocated to support buses is not a huge amount I'd also say that I think there's lots of other things that need to be done in terms of buses in terms of providing road space for buses bus preferential corridors and so on as well and we saw a big roll out of that maybe 20 years ago that had a positive impact and we've seen some retreat are stalling on that in the last few years so I think overall in the round again we've seen more about how we can reinfigurate buses within Scotland and make them greener as well Mark Proskell Just wondering in relation to the green bus fund if there's been any analysis about the number of vehicles that would need to be retrofitted in order to meet the government's aspirations for the low emission zones so we had a figure I think plucked out of the air last week at committee that there would need to be a thousand buses in Glasgow alone but I don't know what kind of analysis the industry has done themselves on that The separate fund I would imagine to show you the lack of certainty that there might be an investment the green bus fund this year was which is usually fully taken up about 3 million a year about half of it was taken up and about half of it wasn't I think 1.4 million went to green buses and the rest wasn't taken up and I believe that there are discussions it's not set in stone but I believe there's discussions that some of that money might be used then as a separate retrofit pot to allow operators to bid for money to retrofit vehicles but you're right that there is I don't have figures as the amount of buses across Scotland I can get back to you on that it would maybe qualify but retrofit is, I would say it's not the golden bullet to solve this issue it's a swift and cost effective means to bring certain vehicles up towards a Euro 6 standard but there are other factors such as it lowers your fuel efficiency there's an increased maintenance cost so you might make an improvement in NOx but you might worsen carbon emissions and I think there's London through TFL have had the experience of doing a lot of retrofit and I think they'd say the bruises to show Britain so there's some lessons to maybe learn this how best to do it because I think it's maybe part of a larger package that might involve things like scrappage or things like leave-in periods to allow operators to invest but over a longer period of time if we're going to reach Euro 6 standards OK, do anybody else want to come in on that? No, Finlay Carson I've got a number of questions firstly to all the panel I'd like to ask where you think Scotland should have more ambitious targets than the EU minimum in relation to your quality That's obviously a political matter for a Scottish Government to decide or what they want to do with it it's certainly true to say that it's an ambitious target and that presents challenges certainly for the freight sector in terms of meeting it like I said before with Euro 6 standards for commercial vehicles air quality emissions from goods vehicles are going to improve the issue with low emissions zones and their introduction is if it creates a temporary hiatus in the meantime and what it means in terms of fleet replacement particularly for smaller and medium sized enterprises and what that means in terms of supplying Scotland's cities and the costs that ultimately pass on to the consumer Anyone else wish to comment on that? Finlay Carson, do you want to? When we're looking at transboundary impacts of air pollution how can Scotland's approach be more agile to address the Cleaner Air for Scotland's vision of how air quality will be best in Europe? I think that it's a simplistic answer but it comes from the approach and that should be that the owner should be on the polluter on the polluter to reduce the pollution so yes, transboundary is a problem with the monitoring and acting upon it but if we can set the policy so that it's the polluter themselves that disincentifies that would be at the root of it Any other comments? We've heard some in previous answers but I'd like to go into a little bit more detail. What work are the freight and passenger transport sector doing to improve pollution and do you think there's adequate resources directed at guidance and information to help you facilitate that and what improvements do you see that could help in the future? Our individual operator members are investing as best as they can and greener vehicles you will have seen for example where the embuses received some press recently about the service which is electric vehicles so there's definitely investment happening we are working with Transport Scotland, we're working with local authorities to make the case for putting bus at the centre of the solution and with Transport Scotland saying provide a stable framework for us so no cuts to BSOG and we're seeing to local authorities let's see how we can work together through partnership through statute quality partnerships or through whatever partnership model emerges from the Transport Scotland bill to say if you tackle this problem with congestion if you allow buses to up their speeds that improves the environmental performance and quid pro quo if you do that we will have resources free to offer a better service to invest in newer vehicles so it's about trying to encourage that partnership to allow us to... Can I just pick up on that point because you're right there are some very good examples out there, Lothian Buses stagecoach in my constituency who have done a lot of good work in this area but is that happening across the board are there very good examples of people who are lagging behind and I guess leading on from that are the smaller operators lagging behind because it's more difficult perhaps for them to buy into this? I think well, our current chair of CPT we have an annual re-collector chair is Sandra White-Law who runs bus chemical white laws and their fleet is completely low carbon so there are examples of smaller to medium sized operators who are doing some fantastic work some who are smaller who may find that there's just monetary issues that don't allow them to update their fleet and they will have vehicles that are perfectly road legal and up to a certain standard but they wouldn't be a low carbon vehicle because they wouldn't be that modern but they serve a role particularly in rural areas where it's very difficult to make an investment case for spending a lot of money in a low carbon vehicle where air quality is not such a big issue and in that area you may be running supported services it's through the local authority where you've got to have a low cost tender so if you have spent all this money in the bus it's going to be so much higher than somebody who's maybe got a slightly older vehicle so it varies across the patch Does anybody else want to come in on Finlay Carson's question? From a freight point of view obviously it's a wholly private sector activity like I've mentioned already there's a lot of freight placement going on with the Euro 6 standard not all effect to an ALEZ does is just buy forward that benefit that's naturally coming anyway it just seeks to bring that forward As I've mentioned before I think a concern would be a bit smaller to medium sized enterprises their ability to replace vehicles the other thing I would say is although we talk about the freight sector there's actually different sectors within that some companies because of their fleet replacement policies effectively this isn't going to be an issue because you're going to have Euro 6 standards across the board very soon in some companies in others where they keep the vehicles for much longer because the vehicles do a lot lower mileage and I'm thinking of companies here involved there's going to be a natural lag in terms of the vehicle emission standards that said a lot of those companies are also looking at use of electric fridges on vehicles for refrigerated vehicles I mean use of electric fridges rather than diesel powered fridges and again that cuts down on emissions the one point I would want to also make and colleagues from the buses sector have touched on it is a bit efficient use of road space and partnering obviously as with any vehicle the most inefficient way to operate a commercial vehicle is slowly and in stop-start traffic that's the most inefficient way in terms of emissions we did a lot of work with Glasgow City Council during the Commonwealth Games about piloting night-time deliveries where we had to just because of the physical restrictions that were going on with the games and we'd like to see one of those legacy benefits from that being greater flexibility in hours and delivery greater use of road space priority given to commercial vehicles in terms of things like traffic calming or rather avoiding traffic calming for commercial vehicles because again that is another way of reducing emissions in the actual city environment David Stewart wants to come back and imagine what he's looking to explore Thank you Can I just ask Chris McCree about the sort of Dutch model of consolidation centres and the previous session of parliament the transport committee visited one I'm very impressed with the model as members may know this is where freight goes to an external site and low emitting vehicles used to take the freight from one area to another unless there's a one-off drop to a large supermarket for example I was on an electric freight bike which I've never come across before but I was very impressed with it and I understand that one of the I think that Sterling was being looked at by one of the transport companies to try and model that Do you have any experience of that? Yes, as FTA we're involved with the Scottish Freight Logistics Advisory Group of Transport Scotland and actually chair the Urban Freight subgroup of that which is actually producing hopefully this quarter guidance on best practice in terms of urban deliveries and looking at how planners, local authorities developers, businesses that generate freight and obviously freight operators can work together The issue of consolidation centres obviously has come up a number of times the SPT, the regional transport partnership looked at it The issue with with consolidation centres is what it does in terms of the actual supply chain if it involves another break in the bulk another handling leg then it obviously brings up extra cost Now so far in the UK I think there's about two operating examples of consolidation centres operated at a local authority level I mean one's in Bath which is funded by employers and Heathrow Airport which is basically a security type thing I mean I could be slightly blasé and say well Glasgow's got a consolidation centre it's called Bell's Hill it's called the regional distribution centres for the major distribution companies that operate around there I think if we're bringing in extra breaks on the supply chain legs like that and using low emission vehicles for that final last mile it obviously puts up cost that's getting implication in terms of the goods in the actual shops because somebody's going to pick up that cost unless of course it's going to be funded by the state or via the local authority in some way but what I would say is that the freight sector does is incentivised by the margins in the sector to make the most efficient use of vehicles and the most efficient use of load space and to minimise empty running so in a sense there's a degree of self-regulation on that anyway from an economic point of view so the ambitions at a consolidation centre is trying to achieve the freight sector is in a sense completely aligned to in terms of the self-incentivisation on it from the economic point of view Thank you for letting me back in I just wondered is there enough carrot or stick to drive technology when it comes to freight transport with articulated lorries and whatever you mentioned it was it's mostly private sector and I know the public sector's driven and so we're seeing a rapid increase in improvement in buses and electric buses come on online is there enough pressure on the freight industry when it comes to lorries to develop electrical engines or whatever and is that something you would see that would need significant support from Government? I think there's certainly stakes at the moment in the forms of low emissions zones etc being proposed but I think in terms of carrots there probably is a lack of that what we have seen in a wider UK context not specifically in the context of Scotland is changes in UK Government policy for example over the years in terms of financial support for alternative fuels for commercial vehicles the reality is there isn't really an option on diesel at the moment electric is really not there for long distance operations local distance yes the gas network in terms of gas refuelling for commercial vehicles over longer distances it's developing it's not there yet so we're in this period where there's technology that will be coming along but we're just not quite there yet what is important is that Government and I mean that in the wider sense whether it be UK or Scottish Government if they are setting up policies of support for alternative fuels they need to have a long term consistency in that approach because we've seen at a UK level examples of supports given to one type of alternative fuel and then just taken away after operators have made investments in that in a private sector environment that's a really difficult thing to justify where you don't have long term fiscal certainty so yes support for areas like that would be welcome but it's going to be long term committed support Moving on, Claudia Beamish Good morning Tule I think I would like to explore further with all of you the adequacy of the Scottish Government's approach but just if I could Mr McCrae ask you a question about whether you see there being a relevance to moving from road to rail for freight in terms of the discussions we're having this morning and if you have any further comments on that before I ask the other question Absolutely, I mean one of mother jobs that the FTA is ahead of their UK rail freight work rail freight across the UK and Scotland as well probably represents about 10% of surface transport rail freight is good for doing certain things but it has to work in partnership with road freight, I mean there's going to be a road leg to a rail journey either at the beginning or the end or in some cases most cases probably probably both in terms of urban freight and urban deliveries I mean while rail can take things right into the city centre there's then got to be a road distribution leg at the end of it there have been trials done at Euston station in London of bringing goods in by night into the station and then taking them away in road vehicles unfortunately the infrastructure to do that at many stations including for example Glasgow Central has been removed over the years actually of particular access to our major stations Glasgow Central Edinburgh Wave where it used to exist for the parcels of mail traffic is physically being taken away so there are physical difficulties with that the other thing of course just to point out about rail freight is that rail freight overall is less polluting than road freight because of the amount of tonnage that can be shifted per gallon of diesel burned but the individual per units of freight trains are actually far more polluting than commercial vehicles the benefit comes from moving larger volumes and that's why it's more suited to bulk calls and to longer distance rail freight trains or the Russell Group or the Malcom Group rather than urban freight distribution and I could ask all the panel for a response to this question about what innovative measures you see should be put in place to discourage polluting forms of transport and our cost congestion and availability of parking adequate disincentives and for anyone who's brave enough on this panel I'd like views on congestion charging and workplace parking as well please Who's brave? I think that the idea of congestion charging should not have been ruled out within the consultation on the omission zones I think we should seek views on that I think again workplace parking levies are a success in nottingham I believe and should be considered and you can use that alongside setting up again sadly sacrifice schemes for public transport season tickets and you can work with Travelling Scotland to provide everyone within an LEZ with a greener travel plan so that yes you may be reducing the parking availability you may be saying there's a cost to bring your vehicle into city centre but you're saying there's a financial benefit for public transport and here's all the information you need to make that easier for you so I can understand that it's maybe not that the app site for it is something we'd need to look into but I think there's certainly positives Firstly on the question of whether the cost incentive is enough I think Saustran Scotland would advocate more a ban on vehicles of certain pollution standards so rather than there being the facility for somebody who can afford it to pay that money to take their vehicle into a city there should just be certain standards below which that vehicle is not allowed into the centre of town on the question of parking levies perhaps not as brave as the committee may hope to say but I think they definitely should be under consideration but I don't think the question is necessarily just about workplace parking levies perhaps a premises parking levie is a better way to put it because quite often you see these large scale out of town developments where people are encouraged to drive their vehicles to that have enormous parking facilities for people so it's so much easier for them just to drive them to consider travelling actively so I don't think that that's simply a question of of people's commutes to work Finally on the question of innovation I wouldn't I wouldn't say that such a Scotland see the solution as particularly an innovative one it's one that exists and it's just a question of innovative implementation it is reducing the amount of vehicles in city centres giving that space to people who would like to walk and people who would like to cycle and just for public spaces for people to linger it's a holistic approach to the system but it is something that is already known it's not a new idea Yes I mean I think just building on that last point I think what we need the vision should be a transformational change in our cities our city spaces and the way they're used and the way people engage with them and that obviously impacts on everything impacts on planning impacts on the pricing of different modes it impacts on the limitations or the access to road space for different modes as well and within that I think the pricing issue is important but it should be seen within that broader framework I think the Act can produce a report 2008-2009 which was look at climate, there's more climate change rather than local air pollution in terms of cost abatement the lowest cost options they identified included workplace park and levees and travel planning actually requiring organisations with a certain number of employees to have a proper travel plan with certain types of behaviours and we've seen some mention in the latest climate change plan of workplace parking levees don't think it's strong enough there but I think we've definitely seen that as part of it and as Paul was saying within Nottingham where this has been piloted that's proven to be a success as well simple things like travel planning I think are important terms of congestion charging again yes we've been in favour of that it's about creating as I said the more healthy mode is the lower cost mode and the more convenient mode forever possible and so congestion charging I think is something we need to look at again in Scotland thank you convener just going back to freight and the transport of freight in terms of going back to model shift almost in that regard I hear people in the margins talking about transport by sea becoming more fashionable again and using our river structures and even occasionally canal infrastructures to make on that how likely is that to be where just in time delivery is not of the essence certainly being looked at is being looked at by a number of the major retailers who see as city living changes and the increasing number of people living in flats and a single people in a single occupancy households increases how they're actually going to deliver and fulfil what people actually want in terms of what they're buying and of course of consumption water freight is being looked at the point I would make and it's not really to surely to Scotland it's a wider UK issue as well is that a lot of commercial wharfage in the physical infrastructure to be able to do that on rivers in the UK rivers within cities in the UK has actually been lost because it's gone over to housing development and then you can almost actually get a vicious circle where you get housing developments on an urban river which used to be an industrial area there may still be commercial wharfage beside them but then you get noise and environmental complaints from the residents about the commercial wharfage beside it so effective of the commercial wharfage operation gets hounded out and I think therefore while there is space for exploration of this it's not a likely solution in the immediate term I know what's been done in some continental cities on mainland Europe that's been looked at but probably the reality is that it's quite a difficult thing to quite a difficult thing to do for the practical reasons Is there anything to be made in terms of structure plans for preserving commercial wharfage? Absolutely in terms of land use planning and structural plans and the major city plans looking at preserving freight sites be that road freight or also particularly rail freight or water freight in terms of their latent capability and the realistic chances of them actually being brought up back into operation I think that is enormously important because always effectively you're just precluding that for a future generation basically David Stewart Mr McCrew will know that in the previous Parliament again there was a major inquiry into freight by the TICC committee but one of the areas I found personally quite frustrating both for rail and for sea was that there is excellent grant funding in freight facilities grant but at the time and this may have changed for a four year period there had been no applications successfully for freight facilities grant so I mean it seems to me bizarre that we have the funding but the operators were saying particularly ports that it was so difficult to make the application that they basically gave up on it but this seems bizarre because obviously this helps our climate change targets if we can get freight off the road on to rail and on to sea and in fact going back into time I mean that was the whole purpose of the Caledonia canal but there's next to no freight on that now where again it seems to me immensely frustrating it's not used more for freight Does FTA we support use of all modes for freight transport where it's obviously economically and also environmentally sustainable I give evidence the freight transport inquiry that you say and also played a part in actually getting back freight facilities grant when I previously been cutting a couple of budgets within Scotland it's worth noting that England has completely cut freight facilities grant where we still do have it in Scotland yes you're absolutely right there are frustrations and issues with the practical process it seems wrong that there's a public pot of money available and yet it's actually under subscribed the reasons you quote for why it's under subscribed are correct there are problems and issues with how the applications can be made bearing in mind though the grant is delivered under a system that has to meet EU state aid guidance so obviously is the UK that holds the permission it then devolves that in terms of administration to the Scottish Government within territory of Scotland but obviously there are some quite complex rules that has to be administered under which I think it explains it but yeah to take your point that there's a frustration about that issue several panel members referred to planning and it's important already this morning the World Time Planning Institute oral evidence to us focus on the need for further training of planners and the mainstreaming of air quality international planning framework I wonder if there are any comments either on that cumulative impacts of emissions and whether they're adequately evaluated in planning development and what priority should be given to air quality when making planning decisions don't have to answer all those but if there's any comments that would be helpful I think we view it vital that if we are looking at a local authority partnership that the planning department is involved in that and that you work together to make sure that public transport is considered at the start of any planning development quite often I hear from members that there's been a new housing development for example and it's impossible to serve it by bus because there's just not the rumour of the turning circles or it just hasn't clearly hasn't been thought through and so it's involved the planning officers at that earliest age and make the case for sustainable and active travel maybe a travel hub so that you can cycle to get to bus or it's accessible maybe discourages car use even as far as that you can see real benefits Susturant Scotland see the products of a planning system right now where it is unheard of that there is a new housing development that you cannot drive your car up to and you are quite welcome to move in but that doesn't necessarily mean that there will be a new housing or cycling route to your school or to a shop or something like that there needs to be an infrastructure first approach to the planning system by which all of these facilities whether that's for active travel or for public transport is in place before the houses are occupied I was just going to add I think I'd say the same thing about retail and other developments from a freight point of view that it's really vital that the delivering and servicing needs those outlets are properly planned in at the early development stage so that freight is considered as an integral part of that rather than as any form of afterthought because obviously those areas are going to generate a large amount of freight both inbound and also outbound and it's important to plan that in at the early stages Anyone else? I think that the action set out in the Clean Air for Scotland strategy under about six on planning if you mentioned a couple of them I think that I'm not sure what they'll really mean in practice so I'm not sure future revisions of Scottish plan policy and national plan framework will take account of the Clean Air for Scotland strategy what does that actually mean what's the impact of cumulative numbers of small developments in terms of air quality where there's maybe not factored in the right way I was involved in the small way in previous iterations of the national plan framework review and the Scottish plan policy what we have now is stronger say on carbon and on a range of things than previous iterations of policy have been the challenge I always have is that when you actually see what's happening on the ground it seems to still be a very big disconnect so you'll see the Aberdeen-Western peripheral going up I can imagine there's already a lot of pressure for new rail-to-ail developments, new housing developments around Aberdeen there's no public transport in terms of rail in most of these areas bus services the actual design, as colleagues have said in terms of making biking and walking the healthy options the most desirable options within that linking it to schools and facilities and shops locally in a way that you don't have to use the car and so on I just don't see it tracking through and I know there's always a delay in the planning system but we really should be seeing better than we're getting now in terms of current developments Mark Ruskell Just to develop this point a bit further what is your impression of the local development plans that local authorities have in Scotland at the moment are they actually adequate for designing out air pollution and designing in active travel bus links, appropriate sustainable transport is there a mismatch between local development plans and a lot of the transport strategies that councils are working on What I think the basic answer would be yes there is a link I think we do have given the scale of a lot of LDFs a lack of that strategic maybe overview in some ways and also I think while there might be some decent aspirations in terms of the objectives of local development frameworks and so on it's questionable how that's then applied to decisions about individual developments housing developments retail developments etc so I think there's more qualified to talk about the detail of that but that's just my perception really certainly Just on that subject We've been told other times in Parliament that there's a distinct lack of planners available but I find it remarkable what you're saying that there aren't sufficient planners to elegantly plan for all of these things that we're asking I understood that would be a given but I'm dismayed to hear you say that it's far from it I don't think I think there are pressures in planning departments I wasn't trying to make that point I was saying that either the committees who oversee this within local authorities are not necessarily falling through on the detail or that either that or the framework is written in such a way that it's on the basis of have regard to this or whatever and that gives an awful lot of leeway for decisions and that maybe individual decisions may not seem to be too controversial but the overall cumulative impact is something that is not contributing to a sustainable settlement in that sense Mark on this point with Alex Quayle I mean who should pay for that upfront infrastructure because clear if you build a new housing estate and it is a bit disconnected from a town and transport links that's a problem you move in you start using your car you're very then unlikely then to move to other sustainable forms of transport so who pays for that should that come as a cost of development industry and reflected in house prices or is a public investment what's the balance of investment that's required there in the industry regarding a precise balance I couldn't say but there should definitely be more of an onus on developers for this it's possible to prove a link between higher house prices and having good walking and cycling links to schools and shops and local amenities especially if a developer wants to establish a new community in an area where these links do not exist I think that is a cost that should be born within what they are hoping to reap from the profits of it yes finally on the theme of adequacy of the Scottish Government's approach could I turn our minds to the views of the panel on whether the cycling action plan and the national walking strategy caps to key actions for active travel are adequate and are we going to make the 2020 target of 10% of all journeys by bike and if not what could we do to be more sure that we will make it and we've I think we've in the sense covered walking and cycling spatially in terms of planning but if there are any final comments on that then great thank you who wants to go first perhaps given a cap specifically referenced yes the cycling and walking chat first I think for how we hit that target maximising the amount of people walking and cycling is targeting the short easy journeys in urban areas so it's modal shift from those short instead of your 5 minute drive to the shop it's a 10 minute cycle or something like that or even in urban areas actually without complicating things too much you might quite possibly be quicker on a bike my point would be that by targeting the urban areas where you have maximum population maximum capacity to get benefit from infrastructure and behavioural change programs that is the quickest way that you will see an increase in the proportion of people walking and cycling for everyday journeys asking what you mean by targeting in that sense by targeting I would say making the facilities available to people so putting infrastructure in the places of high population density having behavioural change programs where they're going to hit large communities in schools or a workplace and things like that just picking up one on that point that there was a debate in the Parliament chamber last week on the promotion of active travel and many of the speakers mainly opposition speakers I have to say were not convinced that there would be an increase in the modal share of cycling to 10% in the next two years however the government have committed the extra £40 million to deliver that where do you think that £40 million should be delivered? Can you be wired geographically or on what sort of projects? Well both projects well mainly projects where should that money be targeted to make the difference? So one of the first products that we've seen is the funding of the five community links projects large scale active travel interventions two projects in Edinburgh one in Stirling one in Glasgow and in Venice these are transformative scale so instead of being small measures they will offer a completely different neighbourhood to people who are living who are commuting along these corridors and it's that level of transformative change that I think will be necessary and that level of ambition I think is now possible with the increase in the budget for active travel it's also important to remember that infrastructure is key to modal shift to getting more people to choose to walk and cycle and without that infrastructure it's difficult to persuade people but the behavioural change programs that organisations such as Sustrans Cycling for Scotland path for all run they do make a lot of difference to catalyzing that change so whilst it's going to be very important that we see better infrastructure from that funding as well the complementary measures such as helping people to overcome their personal barriers to active travel will be equally important 10% in 10 years? I'm not sure we shall wait and see all I will say is that there are a lot of people working very very hard on it and making good progress On that issue There's a lot of good stuff going on the increase in funding is very very welcome I think in terms of 2020 it's probably too little, too late I'd be very surprised if we meet the 10% by 2020 given where we are at now doesn't mean we shouldn't be redoubling our efforts to do that I think the sort of things that we might see more of is along the lines of what's already in London across city, segregated cycle ways in old Scotland cities I think that would be a big step and a very bold statement about the priority of cycling in cities 20 mile an hour zones I think help in terms of reducing the fear factor cycling and so on I think there is a big engagement and public conversation that has to be had around cycling because a lot of people despite the fact it's a low cost and a very healthy way of travelling are maybe resistant to it and so on so there needs to be encouragement around that and I think the 10% spend target either for the Scottish Government we've moved up to 80 million I think we still need to go further than that I think local authorities, Edinburgh's leading the way and this need to go up to 10% and think about cycling in a way and I think in Edinburgh where we've seen that we've seen an increase in cycling in a way that we're not seeing in other Scotland cities so it shows it can be done and I think underpinning it all really is essentially a transformational vision you look at comparable European cities whether it's your Copenhagans or Gronagans and so on 30% cycling Copenhagans as big as Glasgow if not bigger as the city 25% pedestrian as well so a very big active travel contribution to the overall modal share within a very big developed city with all sorts of things and that's been good not just in terms of public health and in terms of transport, in terms of emissions it's also been good in terms of quality life in that city it's a city people want to invest in want to send the kids to the school and want to live in businesses want to come in there as well so I think again we need to think about the vision and the spending on cycling really fits where that fits in with all of that and lots of other things are on place making planning we need to in partnership with that to really deliver that transformation Mr White it's interesting that the focus has been more on cycling but there is a national walking strategy as well and just very briefly because we have a considerable amount of questions still for you just to warn you could anyone comment on the walking strategy because we can't forget it let's say on that in terms of its adequacy I think it's a good first good first step but I think the problem I have is that we actually don't even think of walking as a transport modal at the time we have about 25% of journeys as has been alluded to before 50% journeys in urban centres are less than 2 miles 80% less than 5 miles huge opportunities there as I said I think it's very welcome let's see how it tranks have in the next few years just briefly Mr White oh right sorry you talked about the transformational culture change in other European cities has this actually had an impact in terms of reduction of NOX and PM10 do we see the same kind of air quality problems in those European cities or not can you confidently attribute that to walking and cycling I think the way I see our quality is part of an overall sustainable city your overall sustainable transport approach so I would say the fact more people are cycling is good in all sorts of ways it's good for public health more widely good in tackling obesity in activity and so on it's good for the quality of life it's good for the atmosphere within a city in terms of air quality I couldn't actually point to you know the evidence one way or other on that so I'm sure others would be more qualified to talk about that what's your reaction when you hear that a major road infrastructure such as the Mabel bypass has been constructed and there's no provision for cyclists or walkers on it familiar with the bypassing question however such as Scotland regularly find themselves in a position where they are responding to consultations or even decisions like this where we are trying to make a case that walking and cycling prominence or safety has been diminished for the expense of what seems to us to be a very small reduction in journey times and that does seem to be a common problem Paul White my apologies I just thought you'd come back in and respond not at all I was just cheekily going to maybe pitch for some of that active travel budget part of encouraging walking and cycling is not to just focus on that it's the full, that mode for the entirety of the journey but linking up so if you have investment in bus shelters and investment in cycle racks and bus shelters and hire cycles and then you integrate the journey so you're no longer having to consider the 5-10 minute journey longer set you can maybe see a small rise in the cycle ok thank you for that let's move this on a little bit Sustrans noted in written evidence that the legal requirement to protect people in local air quality mandatory areas and I quote is vague and there is no penalty for failing to reduce harmful air pollution and it further states and again I quote this is a question of insufficient power resources or accountability it's apparent that necessary local air pollution is not inevitable can I ask if there's any examples that you can provide where a lack of resources have actually manifested themselves in no action being taken when it was queer it was required the point that I hope that the consultation is making is that there is a lack of examples of interventions into local authorities so local authorities have to act with air quality management areas but what they do is often quite small measures it may be something like relocating a taxi rank now whilst that would quite possibly reduce the spike in air pollution it's not actually reducing the ambient air pollution so whilst there is an improvement there it's not to the extent that you would hope for examples of interventions from a higher level is as far as I'm aware the powers that SEPA have to direct local authorities have never actually been exercised so it's hard to know how effective they would be and secondly such Scotland would argue that this threshold for action may well then be too high if SEPA has not seen the need to act yet and yet we're seeing an increase in air quality management areas it may be that the standards that are considered for an intervention in air quality in a local authority are too high but it's not saying definitively that that is the case, I just think it's something that should be under consideration okay so it's essentially there's a gap in the ability to act who should act and on what basis he should act I think there's definitely the potential to act because the system in places is untested Does anybody else wish to comment on that issue? No Okay moving slightly on just to cover the issue whether targeted support for upgrading to Euro v6 commercial vehicles would improve uptake without a support scheme how long would it take to convert Scotland's commercial fleet and I guess the other question that sits alongside that when these vehicles are effectively taken out of service what happens to them? Are they scrapped or are they sent off to other parts of mainland Europe? What actually happens? As I've said earlier on Euro v6 and Euro v6 compliance is coming sort of naturally with fleet replacement the issue is going to be fleets which keep their vehicles for a longer period of time or small to medium sized operators as I've said already obviously there is an issue with LEZ it's one that we've flagged up I think in our written evidence in that bringing it forward when there's still not that amount of vehicles physically available is going to be a challenge what happens with older vehicles taken out of service well anecdotally there's evidence that a lot of these older vehicles that don't meet current standards are ending up in parts of eastern Europe outwith of the EU but there's quite a second hand market there so arguments of the pollution issues are actually being shifted to elsewhere and that's what's happening with some diesel vehicles in Germany that have been shipped to eastern Europe so it's not really taking the problem away it's simply moving it somewhere else does anybody else want to comment on that? I think a lot of operators would say that when they buy a vehicle they expect the lifespan of that vehicle to be between 10 to 15 years for a bus if you are introducing new standards maybe the depreciation of that vehicle is no longer over that but it's over a short period of time that's a cost pressure and the second hand market is then also affected because you've got a flood of vehicles that are no longer suitable for use in certain areas and at the same time because low emissions zone progress is happening at the same time as England Wales are looking at clean air zones the build capacity through bus manufacturers is limited even if you had the money to invest in accelerated fleet investment then there's maybe not the capacity to actually provide those vehicles okay, thanks for that we'll keep this moving Richard Lyle in regards to your previous question Mr McCrae mentioned the excellent freight and rail disposition facilities my Ericsson and Belsil constituency can I thank him for that and encourage people to come along and visit Belsil all evidence has shown that there is abysmal 95 air quality monitors across Scotland that's three per council SIPA has only two trailer mounted monitors and additional equipment air quality data can't easily be presented or shown in real time do you believe that existing monitoring stations are in the right places collecting the right data to provide a broad picture of air quality across Scotland should there be more monitors broader coverage in areas required I would agree with you to make a case for an LEZ it should be very much evidence based and that evidence should be as accurate as possible as up to date as possible and maybe that's not the case to give some anecdotal evidence I know that in Hope Street which is one of the streets there is a station right beside a taxi where the taxis all sit with their engines idling and so by nature exactly what it cited it's spiking because there's engines idling right beside it but yes, you do need to have the evidence and so to make a case for it so there should be wider collection of data Yeah, Southern Scotland certainly aren't in enough of a position to talk about the science behind the monitoring or the modelling that will go into low emission zones but we're supportive of modelling to make these decisions so that it is scientifically based and there's less of an opportunity for political decisions to be made on it what is, I know, debated is whether or not the modelling that Scotland has is correct and again Southern Scotland don't have the expertise to comment on it but when the low emission zones are implemented it is going to require a wide level of monitoring to make sure that firstly that low emission zone is functioning correctly but secondly is the modelling that's being undertaken correct and producing results that allow people to implement future low emission zones in different towns and cities that will be able to make a positive difference And the answer that you've just mentioned there Mr Creel shouldn't it be a factor that we should, would you agree that we should have a visible layer quality of information next to the monitoring station so that people like myself or the ordinary public can see what the data is rather than hidden inside the machine so would that not make a direct impact in public awareness behaviour and how could we encourage this I would certainly agree that public visibility of air quality is a good idea we have it on beaches for people but of course there are so many more people breathing in the air in our cities than having a swim so it is somewhat surprising that we haven't yet there are various ways that you could do this but I think simplistically one very similar way would be to what you see by the beaches are just signs in prominent places you should also have systems that allow people to sign up for alerts but I don't actually know what Scotland is doing on that that may already be possible My last question is that how can we improve air quality when designing roads and I'll make a comment again M74M8 there is a pile of walking routes that have just been constructed in the £500 million project in my area so I would encourage Mr Carson to drive through it should planning for actual travel be mandatory when designing roads is a performance of vehicles affected by traffic calming as we make vehicles go slower does that not mean that the pollution stays longer I think if I may that's the point that I hope I've made earlier on from a freight point of view that managing road space and managing traffic and traffic flows is absolutely key to improving emissions from vehicles and I'm sure it's equally true of buses certainly from a freight point of view we want to see some form of prioritisation measures for freight so that vehicles can get in and can get out of the cities as quickly as efficiently as possible that obviously brings with it a cost saving but it brings with it more important than environmental saving you're absolutely right that that is something that needs to be designed in Emma Harper do you wish to ask I appreciate your not health professionals I'm a nurse and I'm the co-convener for the cross party group for lung health so I'm interested in the health angle but which you can maybe give me some advice about but we're looking at lung disease, heart disease stroke prevention so the whole purpose of air quality is to improve it so we keep folk out of hospital in the long term so I'm interested about the monitoring is it enough monitors are we engaging with the schools enough what are we doing with engagement with SEPA are you engaging with SEPA looking at school education looking at other engagement to raise awareness for the whole importance of air quality It's a programme called iBike I'm sure many members of the committee will be familiar with it it's currently operating in 12 local authorities in Scotland it is a holistic approach that's trying to get more children to cycle to school so part of that is working with schools so that they build the benefits of that into the curriculum so whether in particular air quality is something that is covered in these curriculums I'm not sure that would probably very much depend on the school but it is the type of thing that we encourage within that programme to make sure that pupils are aware of it and their parents so just back to a topic you just touched on should planning for active travel and air quality be mandatory so when we're looking at installing traffic calming speed humps Chris you mentioned that there should be some allowance for commercial vehicles to bypass those calming but when we're looking at attitude traffic lights for example that are being installed in my constituency which will actually start and stop the traffic if they're speeding should we be looking at a mandatory input with regards to air quality and active travel when it comes to all traffic calming measures yes is a simple answer I would say that when it comes to modelling and the LAZ through CPAP I believe they're taking a technology driven approach to it where they say well what happens if you replace all euro 4 buses with all euro 6 buses and okay you get an answer to that but model what happens if you phase the lights if you introduce a bus priority through a certain junction and you bring the average speed of the bus up just a couple of kilometres can actually half the amount of knocks that comes out of a vehicle if you can just keep that average speed up and also keep the vehicle on an optimal drive cycle without having to stop start really you do need to you should be considering these things you should be modelling these things to get the best approach to air quality so just developing that point would it be sensible in future traffic management circumstances to favour roundabouts rather than traffic lights or the development of roundabouts in terms of maintaining traffic flows is that such an obvious thing I shouldn't even be asking the question I can't comment on I do not know about that to me it sounds common sense that that would be a better approach but for an example I'm thinking of the example of Hope Street in Glasgow where the lights are phased as such and the bus stops are in such a situation where there's car parking that it's difficult for a vehicle to navigate up the street so that's maybe not a situation for a roundabout but it's a situation where you have to look at measures to allow the vehicle clear to pass each through that street and you'll see air quality improve before you have to think about what improvements do we get by moving from a Euro 4 vehicle to a Euro 5 or a Euro 6 just well as a practical option to do that it should certainly be modelling you should have that evidence base so if that's an alternative you should certainly model for that I would agree on those last couple of points that traffic design measures are properly brought in Mr Carson mentioned traffic calming in his constituency some of that is to do with safety measures and speeds of vehicles and appropriate operations in the A75 corridor which we were involved in there may be other more dominance themes such as safety in that case but certainly the air quality connotations of traffic management and traffic planning do need to be properly considered when they're actually being put in place I had a point on that yes air quality concerns should be factored in when talking about transport planning however I'd be concerned about a debate that took into account avoiding traffic calming measures or maintaining vehicle speeds or even increasing vehicle speeds as a way to reduce emissions I think that there's a public safety question there that is being neglected and there is a there is a similar opportunity to reduce emissions by having slower speeds and safer traffic and reducing the number of people in vehicles because they're happier to walk and cycle Mr White to clarify what I was speaking about with speed improvements in an urban area where you're maybe looking at moving from six kilometres to eight kilometres such as the congestion in these cities and so I don't think it's certainly a threshold that's well below even the 20s, 20s alone when I'm talking about increasing speeds I think what Mr White and I are referring to would be responsible design Mark Ruskell there do seem to be two perhaps quite separate issues here, there's the first issue about the impact of maximum speeds and speeding particularly in residential areas the impact that might have on walking and cycling and also the increase in emissions that studies have shown that you get from driving faster particularly NOX PM10 but then there's also the separate issue about average speed my understanding the average speed is the point that you're making Paul White is that because of the levels of congestion we have in urban areas that's actually dropping the average speed because cars are simply not moving is that right? what exactly are the panel arguing for in relation to speed? there was fantastic work by Professor David Begg on congestion which showed that average speeds in city centres in Scotland is falling about 1% a year, 10% over the last decades and then working from that basis you can see how that impacts upon operating costs impacts upon the willingness of a passenger to use a bus because the reliability and punctuality is impacted and you've just got a vicious cycle where it's just decreasing like so, so I think in terms of bringing up speed of a vehicle or limiting it to smooth passage so it's not stop start it's just beneficial to air quality beneficial to the passenger as well the final question here was about whether the level of detail in the Clean Area for Scotland annual report is adequate to scrutinise the progress very minor comment on that but in our submission we sort of review the actions and progress against all the actions in the strategy in the last annual report and I think we struggled to identify whether some of the actions had actually been completed or certainly if they were in progress when the end point of the progress towards delivery would be but as I said that I wouldn't want to comment beyond that anyway Thank you for that David Stewart I move the panel on to low emission zones, we have debated this earlier on the panel will know that the Government policy is to have a pilot in Glasgow in a years time and to have four by 2020 and thereafter to increase that around Scotland as well I suppose the first question is do we need a pilot project? It is not a problem to have a pilot project and I think that there are a lot of lessons on the modelling and the implementation that can be learnt from from Glasgow however the pace of implementing low emission zones has been slow, I think so we could quite possibly have already completed pilot studies by now and already be in a position to be rolling out low emission zones to all of the cities in Scotland that were deemed to need them with a good idea of what would be effective or not not opposed to a pilot project per se however what would be more of a concern if there was too long was left to digest this pilot project without action in the other cities as well it was appreciated that a deadline or a target had at least been set within the low emission zone consultation of having them within four cities by 2020 I believe I think nothing on pilots per se but there are over 200 low emission zones across Europe already we know the different models we know the experience from other countries as well and as has been said Aberdeen and Edinburgh as well as Glasgow have already expressed an interest in this and the rail quality management areas in those cities plus in Dundee and in Perth as well I believe as well so I think the progress does seem rather slow and if we're not even at the pilot phase yet then what's the implications for the others but we would like to see a rollout across the Scottish cities as soon as possible really whether we need a pilot before that I'm not so sure actually so I think from a freight point of view as you'll have seen from our written evidence while we obviously have reservations about the focus on low emission zones is a way of delivering sort of air quality improvements we would want to see the lessons learnt from a pilot scheme certainly from a freight point of view at a very practical level because there's a number of really practical issues and challenges that come up with a low emission zone particularly in regards to freight and certainly learning the lessons of that and digesting that before moving on to the other cities I think would actually be quite important to us Paul White I think it's a sensible approach to have a pilot project I think that since we all knew that there was a 2018 date attached that it was made it very difficult to be unaware of what city that would be in until relatively recently last month or the month before so there's issues around that but the idea of a pilot project is sensible Is there time to put a Euro 6LEZ in place? To my mind it would you can put in an LEZ and set the standard as Euro 6 you then have different options as to how you achieve that and I think probably the most sensible one is to say that there will be a lead-in time before you reach that standard so phase it in the average in European projects and in London is 4 to 5 years before you reach that if you want to shorten that then you have to accept that there's possibly going to be a cost either the local authority decides to contribute that through retrofitting scrappy schemes assistance with purchasing new vehicles or that cost may be passed on to the passenger through operators having to increase fares to mitigate the cost of accelerated fleet investment This is a danger that some have suggested that you may have a nominal LEZ in Glasgow in 12 months time but it won't be effective for years later to take your point up I think it's just it depends what you envisage an LEZ to be I mean I think if you have a structure in place where everyone knows what is expected of them and they're working towards those goals then I think that's probably a good starting point and I'm sure that there will be certain people within this panel who have a different view of what an LEZ should be from its moment of inception but you have to be careful not to undermine the sustainability of the alternatives to the car if you're hoping to tackle car use so if you set up an LEZ at your 6th standard which means some operators may remove routes because they don't have the vehicles to meet that and then you look to then tackle car use there's no public transport network for those drivers to then use because that has been undermined so I think a sensible approach would be leading times because it's obviously vitally important then that we don't end up reducing services in Glasgow and increasing costs so people end up, are not using the bus but they're using car instead You could have the perverse situation where you introduce an LEZ and it encourages car use It would certainly echo a lot of the principles of those points from a freight perspective in the sense that freight has still got to be delivered and collected from those premises in the low emission zone area and what we wouldn't want to do if there wasn't adequate leading times that are really important here from a freight point of view too but if what we wouldn't want is a perverse unintended consequence of it being difficult to service that area from a commercial and retail point of view and that actually having a debilitating economic effect on the area I think absolutely timetables have to be realistic as I said I think the problem is where we're at now when we might progress more quickly up to the point we're at now in terms of 2018 deadline then we have been but I think it's absolutely vital that in terms of buses that there is a support given to users to get over the issues that Paul's saying there to support is given to bus providers to invest in the buses that will actually make this standard I think that's clear and particularly with a short leading time we need that support from the government to help bus providers to do that one of the crucial areas is a discussion about whether private vehicles should be included in the LEZ the plus side is obviously private vehicles Pluto as well particularly older diesel vehicles the other side of the coin to answer my own question is that you're going to maximise resistance from local people in the local area about the LEZ taking place what's the panel's view on the role of private vehicles in LEZs particularly in Glasgow but hopefully a year away through the modelling that you've seen that this is included within the low emission zone strategy which looks at the LE move pollution within a suggested zone you would see that the bus is the main Pluto in between a quarter and a third of the streets within that zone and the private car is the major Pluto within the the rest of that zone to not include the private car would be it would not solve the issue of air quality in Glasgow and you have to include it is that anyone else I think pollution is pollution obviously there are different types of pollution but if a vehicle is emitting pollution and the aim is to reduce that pollution to a safe level then clearly you have to look at that now how that is phased in obviously there needs to be a conversation that needs to look at the evidence around that but I think logically any low emission zone should be against all pollutant vehicles regardless of the type of vehicle they are completely agree with that it's really important that this focus isn't getting the best environmental outputs and therefore it's got to target the vehicles that contribute to pollution so I think empirically it's wrong to exclude certain types of vehicle I appreciate those political considerations about private vehicles but it's something that's still got to be looked at it would be wrong to just target certain types of operation Can I raise then another issue on buses and displacement I think some of the evidence we've seen from some of the bus companies suggests that within an LAZ you will have your best practice electric vehicles and there will be a kind of trickle down out with LAZ the older more run down vehicles will go to the rest of the area it's a bit like what happens with Highlands and Islands rail carriages but I won't go there on that particular subject today I mean that is a very real concern you might have to do your best practice in LAZ but other parts with the LAZ in Glasgow for example you will have older more polluting vehicles what's the panel's view on that possibility The question that was raised before the issue was raised before about possible dumping of old vehicles in other countries as well I mean clearly that's not a sustainable solution it might in terms of how the vehicles used elsewhere I guess there might not be the local concentrations of air pollution in the areas where they've been displaced to so overall you'd still have a gain in terms of air quality but I think the desire would be that this would over time lead to an upgrading of the emission standards of vehicles across that wider Arburn area not just in the zone itself but something that would have to be monitored and assessed and responded to if that was the case I'm conscious of time convener perhaps I'll close on this question for me is how can we best future proof the design and delivery of LAZs to allow for the use of large and integrated data sets so to give an example what I mean by that for example vehicle emission standards as you know there's been a debate about this at least from Volkswagen and BBC covered this the difference between laboratory conditions and real world conditions and obviously the data that we currently have by driving vehicle licensing centre should the LAZ have a lot more complex data so it can help manage that and we make sure we need to get the right sort of data so to use an old example we don't want to invest in a beta max when it's a VHS world assure my age for that example you wish to respond it's difficult to find that we always urge the Scottish Government to be technology neutral in its approach to where we're going to go with it so don't encourage investment in electric vehicles or biogas we don't know that the future is open and you just want to maybe look at investment in vehicles depending on their emissions performance rather than the technology that lies behind that and the low carbon vehicle partnership is I believe is trying to certify the emissions performance of different retrofit builds to assist in having that data so what level of pollution is associated with which I don't know what other to say that it's useful to have that data but you have to remain technology neutral I just agree with the point that it's got to be very much output led and it's about delivering the best environmental outputs equally monitoring, real life monitoring of emissions from different categories of vehicles is obviously what's key to understanding the real world situation here Thank you David Mark Ruskell Thanks Kevin Just to go briefly back on today's Stuart's point about the source of emissions and about the types of vehicles that we may be targeting through LEZ and other measures Are you confident that the modelling really nails the nature of the problem so I mean Paul White you talked about the source of emissions and proportion from buses proportion from private cars but about the effects of congestion on the road network which then can understand impact on the average speed issues which you're raising reducing that causing more delay is that adequately accounted for in the kind of modelling and approaches that we see Sorry to jump in but no would be my response we would see an LEZ as part of a package of measures to improve air quality and amongst that would have to be measures to tackle congestion The modelling that lies behind the Glasgow pilot project does not take that into account when looking at how to improve air quality it's looking strictly at engine standards and not saying well what happens if the same engine standards are there but they're moving freely or there's no cars in that area so you really need to consider ways to tackle congestion and that's maybe not through just an LEZ but through a statutory partnership and bus operators where the authority invests in congestion measures to tackle congestion and the operator then invests in the fleet so it's not on one side I should say members may be aware of an email that's been sent regarding an incident in the campus at the moment we'll just continue with the committee meeting while it has been assessed just if you're spotting that information coming through Does anybody else want to respond to that point No You have further questions Angus MacDonald This is a tidying up question just to get the panel's views on the record if I could drag you all back to the bus service operators grant as we know changes to the payment rates introduced in April this year I mean that the low carbon bus is a lesser top-up rate of 10.1 pence per kilometre and as I understand it the reason for that was to keep us in the BSOG budget rather than increase it so can I ask the panel in what way you think the conflict between increasing numbers of low carbon buses and the reduction in the BSOG grant might be resolved and so that is the bus representative and it really shouldn't be the policy should be aligned in such a manner that if you're encouraging investment in green bus in low carbon vehicles through the green bus fund that is mirrored through BSOG so maybe the BSOG budget should set a rate but not be capped to allow operators to have that certainty for investment decisions we are looking at BSOG changes again for the coming year to change what is regarded as low carbon vehicles the situation where you could have purchased a vehicle through the green bus fund this year which may not arrive because of the time it takes to build a vehicle and provide it it may not arrive till may next year meanwhile BSOG changes to take place for April I mean that that vehicle is no longer regarded as a low carbon vehicle because the standards change so you really need to look at it holistically and make sure the policies are aligned to encourage investment in that kind of low carbon vehicle okay, so sorry are you confident that that's being done no, no, okay anyone else okay, thanks okay, I think we've covered everything I'm not saying any members indicating they have any further questions to ask can I thank you all very much for your time this morning that's been a useful exercise if there's anything you wish to follow up on writing although I would encourage you to do that as soon as possible thank you very much for your time at its next meeting on the 14th of November the committee will continue to take evidence as part of its inquiry into air quality in Scotland the committee will also review its consideration of petition PE1636 which requests that all single use drinks cups are 100% biodegradable as agreed earlier we will now move into private session and I ask that the public gallery be cleared as the public part of the meeting is now closed thank you