 Good morning and welcome to the public part of the 25th meeting in 2018 of the Royal Economy and Connectivity Committee. Could I please ask all people present to make sure that their mobile phones are on silent? I would like to point out that Mike Rumbles has given his apologies for not being able to attend this meeting. The agenda item two, which is a part of the European Union withdrawal act. It's to look at heavy goods and maritime transport. It's a consideration of two proposals by the Scottish Government to consent to the UK Government legislating on two statutory instruments. For clarity, these are the heavy goods vehicle charging for the use of certain infrastructure on trans-European road network, open brackets amendment, closed brackets, open brackets, EU exit regulations 2018, quite a mouthful, and the maritime transport access to trade and cabotage. Nice to be corrected and I'm sorry I've got that wrong regulations 2018. These instruments are being laid in relation to the European withdrawal act 2018. Under the categorisation proposals set out in the protocol between the Parliament and the Scottish Government for handling such consent notices, they've both been categorised by the Scottish Government as making minor or technical amendments. No comments have been received in relation to these proposals. Is the committee therefore agreed that it should write to the Scottish Government to confirm that it is content for a UK statutory instrument to be given? We are all agreed. We'll therefore move on to agenda item three, which is Transport Scotland Bill. This is our third evidence session for the Transport Scotland Bill. We're going to take evidence from two panels. We'll first look at the proposal in the bill that relates to smart ticketing. The committee will then take evidence on the bill on proposals to bus services. Firstly, I'd like to welcome George Mayer, the director of Scotland Confederation of Passenger Transport, Simon Hume, IT director, CalMac Ltd and Robert Sampson, senior stakeholder manager for transport focus. Good morning. I know some of you have. You've all given evidence at the committee before. Don't worry about pushing the buttons. Simon, for your benefit, don't worry about pushing the buttons. Somebody will do that for you. If you look at me, if you want to answer a question, I'll bring you in on the question. I'll try and get you all in. Simon, if you see me waving my pen frantically, that means that your time is almost up. The first question on this session is coming from Richard Lyle. To move on to the factor of key smart ticketing, I note that getting Glasgow moving argues that the transport bill must include powers so that local transport authorities can enforce an affordable daily price cap across all public transport within the city region, maybe a commendable notion. Do you think that there is a need for a national technological standard for smart ticketing? If so, what benefits might it bring? We are very supportive of adopting standards and working together with other industry bodies. We are already members of some forms that have discussed smart ticketing in the past, and we think that there is a huge benefit not just in looking at it unilaterally, just obviously from our own business but from the very business, but for us to be able to work in conjunction with the bus companies and the rail companies, both of which we think are hugely advantageous to the Scottish Islands and the Scottish economy. We are absolutely very supportive of having a standard protocol to work with, which I think will help all of our software suppliers to work together. Ultimately, it should give us a more streamlined solution and potentially a more cost-effective solution. From a passenger perspective, a national technological standard would assist passengers having just the need for—in the medium term—one ticket would do across all modes if all operators be at bus ferry on the ground rail. If the same national technological standard or common framework then it would make it easier for one integrated smart product for passengers to use rather than the need for a multiplicity of tickets. I was in London a month or two ago and we got the oyster card. I was on buses, I was on trains, I was on the underground, I was on the riverboat, I was even on an airlines zipline across the—if you know where I am—I was even on docklands trains, oyster card, oyster card, oyster card, although once that ran out it could also use your contactless card. So what's the city with this system work in a country? George? Yeah, I think we're on the road to that. We have a standard, it's at 2.1.4. That means the operators in Scotland—bus, coach, train, ferries—cannol work on that platform. We've agreed to that and it's in operation now. We gave a commitment to the Minister for Transport last two years ago that we would introduce multi-operator bus to bus initially in the main urban areas of Scotland. We've delivered that, Aberdeenshire, Aberdeen City, Dundee, Glasgow and the East of Scotland from Dundee to the Borders. As far as shots to the west, you have a ticket that can give you multi-bus journeys. It's an initial platform, but the plan is to build and geographically spread that and then build it in workway partners at ferries rail so that we can have a ticket that you can use across the different modes in Scotland. We felt that it was really important and needed to try and go in and build the roof because if you've made supports to that roof, the danger is that it would collapse. So what we've done is we've built it for the base up, the building blocks are there, the standards are there and we can push on now work with colleagues to deliver an integrated ticket across Scotland. So it is coming. So Richard, I'm going to interrupt you and I'm going to bring Colin in because you'll strang into an area that he'd identified that he'd like to ask about. So Colin, would you like to talk about the oyster card? It's interesting, Mr Mayor, that you talk about the industries doing certain things to develop that in geographical areas, but the reality is that in London you have an oyster card that is introduced by Transport London that covers every single bus company that covers the whole city. Why have we not achieved that in Scotland? Why do we not have a single smart card that covers the whole of Scotland in all forms of transport at the moment? Significantly, do you think that the provisions in the bill will deliver that or will we certainly have ad hoc growth in different companies' cards? Why have we not got an oyster card for Scotland at the moment? What's preventing that and will the bill achieve that? One of the things that we were asked to include within the smart ticket range that we've developed across Scotland for where we're seeing significant take-up was that each card, although it would have its own brand in, would have the standard salt air brand on it as well so that it could be recognised as a Scotland-wide card and be recognised as a card that, ultimately, you'd be able to use in the different public transport forms in Scotland. We are different to London, and an oyster card has been great, but it's dying and new technology is moving on, so we've got to keep pace up, we've got to keep ahead of that game, but there is the opportunity to have a salt air card that will deliver the kind of thing that you're looking for across Scotland in the different modes. With respect, we are not even close to the oyster card in Scotland at the moment, you say that you have the technology to allow this to happen and it's not happening across Scotland, so why? The oyster card is ultimately being reduced in numbers because people are using their bank card. Frankly, we're not at oyster card yet, never mind using our bank card to get around Scotland. If I jump on a bus and don't freeze, there's no chance of me being able to basically have my bank card used and then get off a bus in Aberdeen and be charged the several journeys that I've made in a competitive way at the moment because there is no crossover between Dumfries and Galloway and other parts of Scotland, so why are we not even at oyster card level? Never mind what is ultimately going to replace oyster card, which is the use of your bank card. What's stopping that happening? I think that we felt in discussions with Transport Scotland, we felt that we were really at crossroads, that we had one technology, it's a bit like VHS and Betamax, that you were at a point, a tipping point that said, well if you go to the Betamax route, that is going to die, it will die a death because of the success that we'd seen in other parts of the country moving transport on to contactless payment. So for us, that was a right decision, it was a sensible thing to do rather than invest in a lot of cash, time and effort into something that was going to die, it was more sensible to look at contactless and move on on that basis because it offers up so many different options going forward. The contactless is there now, will change and develop in the years ahead. Sorry, I'm going to bring Robert in, but just a comment is when we spoke to Transport for London last week, they very much said that the oyster card would never die. On the basis, there would be some people that wouldn't have a bankers card or the ability to use that and therefore they'll be using oyster cards for the foreseeable future. Robert, you want to come in and then I'll come back to you, Colin, and back then to you, Richard. Just a couple of points. It has taken a very long time to even get where we are. I think that it was first mentioned in Scotland's transport future in 2004, where the aim was to get one ticket that can get you anywhere in Scotland. We'll sit in here 14 years later and we haven't actually got there. It's probably easier in London because of the set-up of regulation in Scotland and the multiplicity of operators, but slowly we are getting there. We have now got smart and geographical locations, as George has mentioned, in urban areas. The hope is that the technological standard and the advisory group that the bill proposes will actually knit that all together, but it has taken longer than passengers would like to see delivered. It's gone back 14 years to be honest about it. Colin, do you want to come in? I see that Simon wants to come in as well. I just come back to the further point. Will the provisions in the bill be sufficient to deliver what we are trying to achieve around a Scotland-wide smart card, such as the Oyster card, particularly for those people who will never have a bank account, young people, children and little bank accounts, or the fact that you could use your bank card to basically get around Scotland? At the moment, I cannot use my bank card in a bus in Dumfries and Galloway, so will the bill deliver that as it stands at the moment, or do we need to change that bill to make sure that we are not having this conversation again in five years' time? Robert, you go for it, and then I'll bring Simon in. The bill delivers mechanisms for all the operators to get round the table and work together with Goodwill. It doesn't actually give legislation or enforce anyone to actually bring a national product, but from working with the industry and the operators, I see Goodwill to actually deliver that. They are doing it in geographical spots just now, but there is no legislation within the bills just now to actually enforce the delivery of a national smart technology. There are probably two comments that might be worth saying. We see giving the choice to the customer as to how they pay for their travel as being fundamental. There is a lot of talk about smart ticketing and whether you have a smart card. I think that it has been the model up until now. We certainly see that using contactless cards is very much an expanding market. 63 per cent of people in the UK are contactless. It is the most—24 to 35-year-old people are the most common people who use that. We absolutely want to make sure that we reach out to these people, but equally, as you rightly point out, not everyone has contactless. In terms of where we have envisaged this, we see this as being particularly in some of the more challenging connectivity areas that we operate on the islands in some small ports. We have to be very cognizant that we do not necessarily have the ability to have major big ticket machines on our ports. We have to be flexible and allow people that choice. Do we see that involving working very closely with the bus companies? For sure. Do we absolutely see bus sale as being a fundamental product that we want to offer? Yes. Similarly, with rail sale, we have some of that, but we want to do a lot more of that. Our fundamental enabler is where we need the help of Transport Scotland to enable us to move forward with our new booking and ticketing system, which has been under discussion with Transport Scotland for a number of years. That is the fundamental enabler that will allow the ferry business, the Calmax ferry business, to really move forward and work with the companies that you are talking about. We absolutely want to go into modal. We want to offer the choice to the customer, but that is our ask and what we are needing and the help from Transport Scotland to allow us to move that technology forward. Stuart, you want to come in briefly? Yes. I have got two quite small questions, convener, the first of which sets context. Is not the thing about the oyster card that it allows an understanding of the journey that the customer is making end to end to be decided not before it started but after it is completed? That is the key point. You do not have to plan ahead, you just go and make your journey, and then the system looks at the aggregation of all the different bits that you have done and says that is your journey, then it prices it. Is that a correct understanding of the oyster? I am getting nodding heads. Let me now ask the question. In the bill there is provision for a national smart ticketing advisory board, but the one thing that I do not think against in the bill, and I invite you to tell me this matters or does not, is that to enable you to do what oyster does, at the end of the journey, look at all the components that have made it up, decide what the journey is. You kind of need a clearinghouse for the data from all the different operators and so on, be they ferries, be they whatever, to come to conclusions what the journey is. I see nothing in the bill that provides for that technical bit of gubbins to use the technical term that decides what the journey is. Is that a significant omission, or is it by implication that the national smart ticketing advisory board will lead to that happening? If that does not happen, I do not see how you get to the scallop card or whatever you call it. George? I participate. We were instrumental in working with Transport Scotland and putting in place the smart integrated ticketing board that we have. On that board, currently, we have colleagues for ferries, we have ScotRail, we have—in fact, the only public seizure to say that the ones that are not there are the Tram and Edinburgh is the only one that is nearly presented. For me it is an expansion of that board to include local authorities and the other transport of rail that is currently there. We have had those discussions and we recognise that, in phase 1 of the roll-out of contactless payment, it was simply buying the products that are there now. It is a single fare or it is a day ticket or it can be a weekly ticket in some cases. Phase 2 of that is to then think about how we replicate. This is happening now in London and also being discussed in other parts of England and we will be future discussions here in Scotland. Phase 1 is to get the contactless system in and working and buying the products that are there now. We also have to keep an eye on the future to develop on phase 2 of contactless, which allows the things that you have mentioned to happen using contactless. You have multiple journeys and you have a cap on the price for a day's travel. Those are being discussed just now. The expansion of the board will allow that to be developed. I will quickly draw it to a conclusion. We are looking at a bit of legislation. At the end of the day, does the bill speed up the process of getting to that end-point? Is that really the question in terms of the legislation? Yes, I think it will. That is fine, convener. I want to say whether it will speed it up or not. I think that it will speed it up, but there is one aspect of it that we think is fundamental to why that advisory board is so important. We see ferries as being slightly different. In some respects, it is almost more like an airline model because we need to know on a number of our routes the routes are pre-booked. Customers have to make their choice in advance. We need to know that they are coming. That is an advantage because we can speed up the customer's experience because we know who is coming and how many people are going to be on our vessels. Us being part of that board helps us to make sure that those dimensions are not forgotten, because that is really where the integration comes from, not just assuming that it is about buses and trains, but what are the idiosyncrasies of some of the other transport modes that might have slightly different demands? Later, a requirement to know who is coming. On certain routes, yes, we do. Richard, I am going to bring you back in if Stuart has an answer to your question. A quick question. Last week we found out that you got to London and it is all red buses. Last week, I found out that there is no London transport that is run by various operators who bid, but they use their buses, the red, the brand. Problem Scotland, in Lanarkshire, we have got several bus companies that go from bus to bus to bus with the same ticket. How do we get the same thing that they have got in London, which is impressive? How do we get the same in Scotland? The one reason why we cannot do what you want to do is that we have got all those various companies who do not want to work with each other, who do not want to know each other, who think, well, if he buys a ticket off that guy, I am not getting mackered. There are areas in the bill that cover that. We would try initially to encourage people to participate, because there are commercial benefits to doing it. It will encourage, I think, if we can get things right, it will encourage additional journeys to be made across the board. If that is not enough incentive for only an operator to increase ridership, I question why they are in business. We are going to move on to the next question, which is from the deputy convener, Gail Ross. There is a part of the bill that says that what proposes that Scottish ministers would require local authorities to establish their own smart ticket and schemes, but listening to the evidence that we have had this morning and the evidence that we have had in from local authorities, they are not keen because they say that it is going to take away their autonomy and it is going to give them additional administrative burden as well. Do we want local authorities to produce their own smart ticket and schemes, or is it better to have something that is Scotland-wide? Robert, do you want to come in on that? A number of journeys are for the majority are within local authority areas, so there are benefits to that, but there are also a number of journeys, depending on where you live, across boundary. From our evidence, what passengers want is a simple, convenient, flexible ticketing system that allows one journey across all modes, and where there is not an artificial boundary from, say, North Lanarkshire, where I live, and to South Lanarkshire, where you can go from, whether it will be Hamilton in one ticket and not having it. A one-stop shop ticket would be the best solution in the long term. George, do you want to come in on that? You know what powers have been there in the 2001 act, that certain transport authorities could introduce. To my knowledge, across Scotland, with the exception of SPT, I think that it is overharming. I think that that has been part of the difficulty in the past, that there has not been the motive and inventiveness to come up with that type of ticket that Robert White rightly says is being looked for by transport users. That is generally why, two years ago, we got to the point of frustration and said, well, we are going to push on and actually do something here and deliver it. Yeah, it seems sensible to everybody that you build that up using the main urban areas and then expand it into the different modes. Simon was right. We get hung up on the plastic card. The range of technology, we have to offer the full range. If you look at Glasgow, where we have got contactless, we have got smart tick in, multi-operator smart tick in, telephony. As of last week, less than 30 per cent of the journeys are now cash. 8 per cent are off bus. Over 50 per cent, 56 per cent are now one in the smart modes. If you look at Aberdeen, less than 26 per cent of the journeys are cash. 8 per cent off bus, they go to shop and buy their ticket. 66 per cent are in some form of smart technology, so it works. We have to get that choice. I think that we could expect local authorities to deliver a range of choices. If not local authorities, who? I think that we have to work collectively. We need to involve local authorities and the new board that is being suggested. It is important that we take the views on board. It needs everybody that is presently on the additional folk that need to join to be part of that and to agree the nuances that will be needed between the different transport modes. That is the best approach that is in it. It will be done collectively in agreement, and we will get there, as we are demonstrating. I am probably not best placed to comment about bus schemes. From a ferry perspective, we operate, as you are aware, through a contract with Transport Scotland. That puts obligations on us to work towards smart ticketing. I have already made reference to the system needs that we have there. We see Transport Scotland as being a real enabler and something that really helps us to get traction there. That is a good model by which it is not just a ferry company doing it in isolation but is working with rail and others. That is where we see Transport Scotland providing some help to us. Jamie, do you want to come in on that? I think that you have got the next question on that. I am happy to continue this theme when it is rolling into one. I do not share your optimism is my problem. I think that there are a number of things that the bill could have done. I think that there are three areas where they need to work together to ensure some sort of national standard. On a technical level, there clearly needs to be standardisation in the back end of all of this, so that multi-operators and multi-types of purchasing models can be used. There is obviously a regulatory environment around that that allows them to data share. However, what is missing is the third bit, which is the commercial agreements. I think that the idea that operators will just sit around a table and work it out amongst themselves is all very well and good. However, we said that 14 years ago and we have made no progress, there is by default of the system in Scotland going to be competitive at this agreement between operators in terms of the revenue share on a multi-journey ticket. My question, first of all, is, would, whilst contactless technology is welcome and convenient, does it really address the problem of disaggregated ticketing and journey ticketing? Does it offer real value for money if you are still paying for individual journeys, albeit in a more convenient method? I think that the front end in the technology platform is there. We have different park offices. Transport Scotland has a park office. It hosts the national concessionary travel scheme on that. It also hosts some commercial arrangements for smaller operators across Scotland. The technology is now the issue here. Joining it up is now that difficult. People are using the different formats. We would like it to be wider geographically, and we would like to be further along the line having partners able to join us in widening the modal option as well. We will get there. In England, DFT spent £180 million on consultancy work to try and build the roof. The overarching ticket would do everything in England, and it failed miserably. It wasted £180 million. We are trying to build up and build a structure that will support the roof, which will support the overarching ticket and aspiration that you are looking for. We have only started this two years ago. Whose job is it to ensure that the roof gets built? If you say that the industry is itself setting the foundations by creating those common standards and common back offices, but if there is no mandatory vision from the Government to say that you must work together to integrate, there is no regulatory environment in which that has to happen, who is to say that the roof will ever be built if there is what benefit is in it for the operators? Well, the encouragement comes through, as it did the minister of transport and the First Minister. We hope that enthusiasm and commitment will flow through to the new cabinet secretary. I am sure that it will. We have had early discussions with him. The industry, as I should say, is up for it. We are going to deliver it. My name will be for that. It will happen. It is happening. It will expand modally and geographically, and it will move on in phases in terms of how the proposition that goes to the customer will move as well. It will have to because our customers are telling us they like and they love it. Can we have more, please? We would be silly to ignore that. Can I just correct you as well that these things are set up as proper businesses? It is not a case of operators sitting in a smoke-filled room agreeing how they will carve up the price. We do not get to do that now. That is history and the history that is going thumbfully. It is done sensibly on a business case basis. There are directors running the companies, so it is done sensibly. I wouldn't have landed here if it wasn't of that. Can I just ask a question? We heard from Transport for London that the thing that people least look forward to of the morning was buying a ticket. The easier you made it, the more likely they were to get on to the transport and it was likely to happen. You have said that it is going to happen. When is it going to happen by? Can you give us a date of when it is going to happen by? I am slightly taken by what Robert Scott said earlier, that it has been talked about for a while. Do you have a date in mind when people will be able to use their smartphone or their card or their Oyster card across all of Scotland? It would just be nice to know that. I wish I could. I am now going to sit here until you lie. That would not be me any good or your industry any good. In some respects, the figures that I have given you are only one operator in two parts of Scotland. Those things are rolling out as we speak. I would like to think that if we were back here in two years' time, there would have been a great deal of progress made, but there are franchise issues that need to be resolved. I am waiting in some respects for those guys to get the franchise issues resolved with the Scottish Government and then we can push on. I am going to hold my breath and I am going to pass you back to Jamie, sorry. I am not going to mark a silly projection. Jamie, that is right. I am sorry, I missed that last comment. I am not going to mark a silly projection. Before that, I would hope that the next two years there will be real progress. I hope to, but I am pessimistic. Mr Samson, you wanted to come in before I move on to my next question. Perhaps with the smart ticket advisory board, what advice does the Scottish ministers might be aware of as the Scottish ministers to build me a roof? Can I ask the panel what their views are on the modal shift, which is slightly off-field at the moment? If we really want to encourage people out of their cars on public transport, and we talk a lot about that in this committee and the benefits of getting people on to transport, which is for the benefit of the environment and the operators' commercial themselves, the problem is the disparity at the moment across Scotland. It is great that there is good work happening in Glasgow and Aberdeen and in cities that are more likely to happen, but it is really not happening, as Colin Smith said, in our rural areas. Even as Richard Lyle said, one operator does not talk to another and tickets are not able to be used on cross-operator services even within the same mode. The idea that you cannot buy a tram ticket that somehow connects to a rail service even though they built a station that you get off the tram and get on to the rail—the whole thing seems absolutely ludicrous. How can we expect people to get out of their cars and get on to public transport when we have such an antiquated complex price and structure that really has no standards across the country? We are looking at the transport bill. Should the transport bill be addressing that, is it going to address it or is it completely missing the trick? I think that one observation that we would make on that is that we hear from our islander customers and representation and the businesses and the MSPs from the islands that a lot of the challenge that is happening in terms of tourism in particular is that vehicle traffic on our ferries is expanding and in a lot of times that is becoming a problem to the islanders because that is giving the difficulties of being able to go about their business. What we see in terms of modal shift is actually if we can encourage the leisure traffic, the tourism traffic, not to take their cars to the islands and actually then be able to use the local bus services then that is a huge benefit. Firstly, it is a benefit for the bus services. Secondly, it is a benefit for the leisure travellers because they will have that choice. Thirdly, it is a benefit for the islanders because there is capacity for read-up on the ferries that they need to move their freight and their businesses around. In terms of what that will offer, what we see is that it is as much as anything providing information to our customers and providing that ability to be able to say, yes, you can get on your train in Glasgow, you can take a train to Oben, you can go from Oben out to the islands and once you are on the islands you have a bus service and we give you that information there. This is where we see maybe even going beyond a smart card, we see this as being mobile enabled, we see an app enabled thing which is not only selling the ticket for all of those different modes but also providing the timetable information and the logistics information and that to us is what a truly integrated solution starts looking like but you can only do that if you are working to the same ground rules of the same standards and the same technological approaches which is why we think that there is some good mileage here. Yes, we have some way to go in terms of our technology as I referenced earlier on but that is certainly our vision of where we want to go because we think that there are massive wins for the business, for the environment, for the leisure traveller and for the islanders and that has got to be a win that we should strive for. Richard, do you want to come in? If you had that integration you would actually save people money because I wouldn't need to pay to go on the bus, I wouldn't need to pay to go on the train, I wouldn't need to pay separately to go on the boat. In London you only pay one maximum charge for the one day, it doesn't matter where you go and I think they are taking the zones off now or maybe they are still there but I didn't feel it was expensive to go on what we went on when my family and I were down in London but if I go on a bus, a train or whatever to go to Malyg or whatever, it costs me megabucks so would a smart ticket sort that? One of the main attractions or to get more people using smart technology is passengers expected to be cost effective, they expect it to be to make a saving, they expect it to be a reduced charge, that's one of the main attractions that get people using smart technology, there's a benefit and cost, there's a cost saving for me as a transport user, that is very much a forefront of passengers mind when they want to use smart technology, there is a cost saving benefit for me and that's got to be part of the system. I think from our perspective I can't comment on whether or not that would result in cheaper fares because our fares are pretty much set by Transport Scotland in terms of the ferry fare so I can't comment on whether or not there will be any opportunity there but what I think it would do is provide a cheaper option for people to travel because rather than them having to take the car with the expense of taking the car, they will know that they can go as a foot passenger which clearly is considerably cheaper so that's where I think the benefit comes from, you're helping people as I say not take the more expensive option and actually giving them a flexible option that does make it cheaper for them. Sorry, I mean I think Richard, when we had our meeting and you were out at Transport for London is one of the things that was made clear was that one of the reasons why people were happy to use transport and happy to use smart ticketing is because they could see on an app what was available to them and they could plan their journey from their home and work out when they're going to leave. Do you see that's important as part of the smart ticketing solution that allows people to plan it before they've washed their coffee cup up exactly how they're going to get to go to be? Yeah, George, you understand? Yeah, I think it's hugely important. One of the criticisms that the previous minister made of the industry was that it was extremely difficult to find the fears that he had to pay to get on the bus and we took that on board as best we could and harnessed the travel line Scotland so that if you were journey planning on travel line Scotland, journey planning ads and looking to a journey between two points, it now provides you with the fares information, the standard fare and if you hover over that it then offers up information on the range of discounted tickets that are available. We're working with Transport Scotland and Travel Line Scotland now to get to the next phase of that so that once you've identified the journey, you've identified the fare, you click on the fare and you go through and load it on to your ticket. Again, there's progress being made on that but it's hugely important that we change that information provision. At the previous point on multi-operator tickets offered on discount, if you look at one ticket in the east of Scotland last week, if you were using two different bus services, you can buy one ticket now that can get you a discount of between 30% and 50% on the same journey. In the east, it is integrated with rail and there are options there for doing rail journeys as well. Those benefits will come. You wanted to ask a question on Robert and Simon. I'm going to come to you and just say if Jamie can wrap something up that you could answer as well. It's interesting to talk about mobile tickets. I like to leave the committee room and go on my phone and order a ticket to London, go to Waverly and go to London, and I could buy my ticket before I get to the station. However, if I want to go to Glasgow, I have to go to the station, stand in a queue at a ticket machine and buy a ticket. Is mobile ticketing really being used to its full benefit given that the majority of the population have access to a smartphone? Will it be done on an operator-by-operative basis in the sense that improvements are welcome, but will that be an integrated or centralised mobile ticketing system based on what you have just said? I think that we will get to that. Initially, it will be individual products that will build that structure up and then you can start to do the smarter things about integrating modes and different ticketing options. We always have to keep in mind that everybody has got smart technology, but I think that it offers opportunities that we just didn't understand before. Some of the things that we are seeing these days with the new ticket machines that operators are putting in have the facilities to do a multitude of things. The technology is nearly the issue. It is getting around the table and agreeing that it needs to be done and then pushing on. In terms of people being able to book over their coffee in the morning, we think that that is a benefit because I made reference to our bookable routes, 15 of our busiest routes, are very heavily capacity constrained and people want the confidence to be able to book that ticket and be able to know that they are going to get on that vessel. This is why I reference the ferry industry being slightly different to the bus industry. We have that capacity. We have to manage how many bookings we can take for each of our sailings. That is where the integration between the mobile solution that Jamie was referencing and how it integrates into our live booking system is fundamental to us. That is a really important point. Mobile ticketing to us is a great benefit. If people want to be able to see whether they can sail tomorrow on that particular ferry, we can tell them that they can. They can book it right now, and they have confidence when they make that booking. Smart integrated ticketing basically goes hand in glove with smart integrated information for passengers. They come together and there are some wonderful apps out there. I do not know if you saw it down in London when you were there. CityMapper, for instance. Absolutely a wonderful app that I can tell you about the courage of the train to get a seat where to get the best exit from the station all on one app. There are solutions out there. In something like CityMapper, because hand in hand with integrated ticketing, where a Scotland-wide app can do the same thing and the functionality, there are solutions out there. We just have to deliver them. Thank you, Robert. John, I think that the next question is yours. Thanks, convener. I think that we are kind of going over the same ground from different angles, but if I can have my shot as well. I have got this card, so this is the salt air card, which, as I understand it, is national, although it is issued by Glasgow City Council and has their mark on it along with the subway. If that has been going for a few years—I have used this in Orkney with the committee, I have to say—why cannot we have something similar for other transport when people are paying? Is it the fact that it is paying that makes it so difficult? The card that you have got is in the same platform as the smart cards that are being distributed to thousands of people across Scotland now. The technology is there now for you to have a card. If you look at the statistics that your transport Scotland team produces, the vast amount of majorities are local journeys. But if you want to go for a day trip to Dundee, and we have the technology lined up with a rail company, you can load your rail ticket on to that card. To work top down, why on earth are we not doing the smart ticketing top down? The view was reached within the steering group that has been set up. It is the best approach to build up for the bottom, capitalising on the volume that you get through local journeys and the main urban areas, and then expand it geographically and modally. That work is on-going. It is from Fife and South Lanarkshire and North Ayrshire that they are all got major reservations about this local building up approach. It appears that they would prefer a top down approach. If they had since 2001 to hear a chart about that, they would have done away. Robert, do you want to say anything just on that? Just from the passenger perspective, we are talking about building top down or bottom up. From wherever we are, the house is getting built. What we need now is the will from the transport industry and the levers that the Government has to deliver. As I said earlier, it has been 14 years. Is there an industry enthusiastic about this card, which came top down? Some operate as well, and I would imagine somewhere because of commercial concern. So, if we wait for everybody to agree, we could be waiting a very long time, couldn't we? It gives me a discount on the train that gives me the subway. Is it the concession card? John, I notice that everyone is reaching into their pocket to pull out a plethora of cards. It makes it difficult for the official report to see all the different types of cards. I do not think that any of them were pulling out money. I think that it was just all travel cards. Stuart, briefly to you, and then I am going to go to Peter. It is just, I think, my colleague and I offline have worked out that one of the problems is that we have a standard Excel, ScotRail, senior citizens, but it appears, we have established, that the ScotRail app only works on Android phones and doesn't work on Apple ones. That is a bit of a problem that we have discovered. Absolutely, I can tell you that not all of the routes on ScotRail are smart ticketed either, because if you start at Keith in the morning, you have to go and get your ticket from the machine. So there are huge problems, I would say. Peter, can we just go on to you then? Let's move on a bit. I mean, we've all been speaking about increasingly using new technology, which is grand, electronic payments, contactless payments, all that stuff, but we've got to recognise, and this has been mentioned before, that not everyone has access to that technology, you know, mostly, but not exclusively, probably elderly folk and the very young. So how do we ensure that as we move forward with new technology that these passengers aren't left behind? What are we going to give to them in the future? Robert, I'd like to bring you in to start with on that, if I may. It's critically important. We all like to get carried away sometimes with mobility as a service and various technology advances, but a lot of users out there, consumers, we still want to use cash, we still want to talk to someone for reassurance at a booking office. So that's got to be part of any ticket and solution in the mix. It's not all got to be smart and enabled, it's got to be room for passengers. Who wants to pay by traditional methods? Who wants the reassurance from the company? Who wants a paper-based ticket? No, it is a solution for a lot of people, but not for everyone. So that's got to be in the mix of any transport bill and any policy and any advisory board going forward that not everyone will want to use smart and we've got to remember that, not everyone can afford it. And cash on CalMac? We still see cash as being a very valid form of payment and we see no reason to move away from that. I think, as I referenced earlier, you know, we operate in some very challenging environments in some respects and in some areas where we have no staff, no buildings at very simple slipways. So actually, it's our vessel staff, our staff on our vessels, who we're giving the capability to be able to take cash, to be able to use contactless. And we want to give as much choice as we can to our customers. And again, particularly, you know, I referenced the tourism market earlier on. You know, a lot of people will be coming to Scotland and they won't know what a smart card is, a Scottish smart card. They will be expecting to pay cash and that's fine. Why would we say no to that? So, you know, everything that we see in terms of how our systems work, you know, we've got ticket offices in many of our ports, they provide, those staff provide huge value and comfort to our customers and they offer those choices as to how they want to pay. And that's absolutely something we are, we intend and will continue to offer. George, just to, rather, of cash on buses as well, do you think that? Yeah, and I've already said that the cash will need to remain. I think there are opportunities for things like children, rather than having cash, they can get a thing in their school bug now that speaks to the ticket machine and it works seamlessly. So there are lots of options but cash will need to remain. Peter? Just to follow up on that, is there any way that, you know, going down the cash route, is there any way that somebody paying cash could then bundle up a number of journeys with that one cash payment or is that something that none of you could envision happening? Robert? Yeah, it happens just now and with card and tickets and flex, he passes that with cash, he can buy 15 journeys and get 20 journeys. There are products out there that benefit cash users as well where you have some saving if you want to buy a flexible pass but it's a higher cash payment obviously than a single ticket but there are still benefits out there for people who use cash. Simon, I'm going to bring in the deputy convener again. Simon? Just a very brief one on that one. We actually do offer that service so you can buy a combined rail and ferry ticket already. Yeah, not on many routes and that's the opportunity we see but there are some limited numbers of routes where that service is available and you can pay however you wish. Maureen, you want to come over here? With contactless or an oyster card or whatever, one of the problems I think is confidence that you're getting the best fare possible. I mean, there is a multitude of fares on any mode of transport, often I think designed to confuse and even you get go to different prices for the same journey on different platforms and I don't mean rail platforms, I mean whatever you're going to, you're trying to to book it on. I wonder how you can guarantee and transport for London, you can absolutely guarantee that you're getting the best fare possible. I wonder if there's a way that fares could be streamlined or that are more open and transparent and maybe you have enough peak fare, I see the point of that. I don't think people have the confidence at the moment that you're getting the best fare possible and even on concessionary cards. I mean, why can't a concessionary card, you have a ScotRail concessionary card, a bus concessionary card, that's not even streamlined, I don't think. George, I'm going to let you come in. Robert, if anyone wants to come in, all I'd say is I've got two more questions, so short answers would be good. George, if you want to head off. I think that technology in the form that you've mentioned in London is inevitably going to come to Scotland as part of, if nothing else, contactless because it allows the technology to then drive the maximum fare that you would pay in a day if you make x journeys and that's it. Users want security with smart technology, how their personal data is secured, how their contactless information, the bank account etc, is secure. It's also got to be transparent and to attract people to smart technology, the value for money in it, how it's better than paper-based tickets, the convenience and what the savings I'm making. Those are the seven recommendations that we've made to the committee and we're writing evidence about what users basically need to attract them to smart technology. Just really quickly, thanks convener. We're sitting here at a really high level talking about what users want and what users need and we're talking about an advisory board and we're talking about local authorities. But what consultation has happened, is happening, or should happen with the actual users of those services to ask them exactly what they do want? Robert. Over the last four or five years, if you checked, there's about 10, 15 reports on our website, bus, rail, tram as well, what passengers want to see from smart technology, what the seven key criteria are and its value for money, convenience, simplicity, security, flexible, tailored and leading edge. It's all been evidence-based on the users of the system and what they want to actually see in delivering smart technology. Is that being Scotland-wide? It's included Scotland's GB-wide. Does anyone else want to add anything to that? George. I just say that we as an organisation and the operators that we have in our membership use the reports that transport focus produced to learn customers' views on a range of different things. In addition to that, bus users of Scotland also hold surgeries in different parts of Scotland for the operators and bus users that meet with the general public that bus services. So there's a number of forums that run as well in different parts of Scotland for the customer that comes along and tells the operators and the local authority the areas that are issued and for the thing that needs to be improved. If you're not listening to that then you would suffer. A very quick final question, if I may. It appears that everyone's in favour of smart ticketing and getting it out there as quickly as possible. Is there one change that you would make to the bill to make sure that that happens sooner rather than later, George? Money's always helpful, but so far it's been done to quote quicker and less costly to the Scottish Government than had been expected. So we're going to keep working and deliver things over the next few years as quickly as we're going. I think the bill, as it stands, we're very supportive of. In terms of what we need to really drive that forward from a CAMAC's perspective is the help that I alluded to earlier on, which is we need Transport Scotland to step up and help us move forward with our new ticketing platform. That's our big enabler and that's the thing that will really bring the ferry industry into this whole forum and we are massively keen to do that. Robert? Yeah, as the bill stands, I think the remit of the advisory board should be to deliver in Scotland's transport future 2004, where one ticket will get you anywhere. A simple answer and on that note, maybe it's a appropriate time to thank you all for the evidence that you've given us this morning and I'm now going to briefly suspend the meeting to allow a witness change over. Thank you very much. Good morning again for those that are joining us now that we're now going to move on to the second panel and this is on the Transport Scotland Bill, where we'll take evidence relating to proposals relating to bus services and George Mayer, who is the director of Scotland Confederation of Prices and Transport, has stayed in his seat. Gavin Booth, the director of Scotland Bus Users Scotland, Emma Cooper, chief executive for Scottish Rural Action, Chris Day, policy adviser to Transform Scotland and Professor David Gray, Professor of Transport Policy at Robert Gordon University. Thank you for all attending this morning and the first question this morning is going to be from John Finnie John. It's widely acknowledged that there's been a dramatic loss of bus patronage and I know that Mr Mayer will be familiar with what I'm going to refer to because it was his organisation that commissioned research and that research said that this was largely linked to increased car ownership, longer journey times and these two in my view will be inextricably linked and fair increases exceeding the rate at which motoring costs increase. Now, we've a lot of evidence on this particular aspect of the bill and it's being referred to as a missed opportunity. I wonder if the panel would comment on whether the bus-related proposals in the bill tackle the underlying causes of the long-term decline in bus patronage, please. So the secret is to try and catch my eye and I'll definitely bring you in. And if I can't see anyone looking at me, I'll pick the one who looks least willing to answer it. So if you want to come in, here's your chance. David, I think you want to go first and followed by Chris. No, that's the short answer. I think the fundamental issues facing the bus industry are in urban areas go back to the mid-1980s when you abolished regional councils and in rural areas back to at least the early 1960s because there are fundamental structural issues in rural areas. The fundamental problems can be traced back to the abolition of regional councils. We have too many small local authorities who tend to be competing for housing for retail and for jobs and they are quite often overlapping sensible journey to work areas. The long-term social change that results in that is people living further away from where they work, take recreation, socialise, et cetera, and that societal change is basically driving down bus use. I think that the bill tackles the symptoms but it's planning and probably local authority changes that would need to be tackled on the line disease. Chris, do you want to come in on that? Yes, we did use the phrase missed opportunity in our written evidence. I would certainly endorse that sentiment and our concern is that it doesn't address the underlying issues, which you've probably already touched on. What I think is important not to lose sight of is that the picture is very patchy. There has been a long-term decline generally, which appears to have perhaps levelled off slightly on a Scotland-wide basis. If you look at the graphs in the SPICE briefing, which I've certainly replicated in our evidence, but from the Transform Scotland point of view, bus patronage is not as high as we would aspire to as an organisation that is committed to sustainable transport. The patchiness is that, again, if you look at the SPICE evidence, it shows that the decline is different in different parts of Scotland. The decline is perhaps less pronounced in Venice, for example, in south-east Scotland than it certainly is in Glasgow and the Old Strathclyde area, where it appears to be particularly pronounced. I don't want to suggest that that's a reason for complacency in respect to the other parts of Scotland, but we need to look at how you increase bus patronage. As has been touched on in urban areas, it's about congestion, it's about parking. Perhaps in rural areas—I'm sure Emma will have something to say about this—the issues are quite different. Perhaps in rural areas you need to look at different ways of delivering bus services, rather than having a 47-seat vehicle trundle in a long country road once every second day. You need to look at alternative ways of providing service to meet their aspirations. There are differences in different parts of Scotland. Emma, it looks like Chris has introduced you. Do you want to come in on that and then I'll bring Gavin in. No, we don't think that the Transport Scotland Bill will tackle the underlying cause of the decline in bus services, unfortunately. To do that, there would need to be a significant increase in service provision in rural areas. You would reduce journey times, more seamless journeys, connect different modes of transport much better and more effectively than we do now. You would need to include fare reductions in that. You would need to look at the whole transport picture in Scotland and think about how all those things go together. At the moment, the bill for us isn't tackling that now. You wanted to come in with us. Sorry, Professor. I was a councillor. I never liked to have tried regional councill in my life. I was a district councillor and then became a North Lancer councillor. I don't agree with the fact that regional councillers were the cause. Was the cause not deregulation? You cannot get a bus. You cannot find a bus. That's why people are no-going on buses, because they are no-regular. They don't come along when you want them. That's the reason why the bill has to tackle that cause. Regional councillers are perfect, but there was better co-ordination of economic development, housing, transport and retail than we have, not that there was. At the moment, we have had about three decades of decentralisation, which has been developer-led primarily in many areas. Transport services and planning have had to follow rather than lead in many cases. Stuart, you had a supplementary question. It's a tiny wee thing. I wonder if the buses uniquely make it difficult for people to get on buses compared to other transport. I remember years ago, I got on a bus and I found I didn't have the change, and therefore my bus journey cost me more than it should have done, because I had no idea what the fare was, and I just didn't have the change. It kept me off the buses for 20 years, and I know plenty of other people in the same. Should the bill therefore ban fixed cash only? Unfortunatley, that's probably the ultravarious for this Parliament. Gavin, do you want to comment on that, or anything that you said earlier? Yes, I think that that is in a way tied up with what the previous session was talking about, sort of integrated fares and so on. That might well address some of the problems about exact fare systems. I take the view that things are perhaps slightly different from the others. I have been around this industry for more than 50 years, in the days before deregulation and the days since deregulation. I worked in the industry at the time of deregulation, and I have seen over the past 30 years since deregulation that the bus industry is performing much better for the passenger. I think that, in the previous regulation days, the passenger was sort of fairly near the bottom of the heap. I worked for the bus company, the bus group, that was providing millions of journeys throughout Scotland every day, and it was all about performance, it was all about production, rather than about the passenger, the end-user. I look around now with the benefit, hopefully, of that experience, and I see bus companies that are commercially motivated, that understand the passenger much better than they did, that understand that marketing can reach the passenger, that they understand the market and that they can sell products to the market. Of course, it is not perfect, but I believe that we are much further on than even that the figures—I see the figures, I know the reasons for the figures—some of them, I suspect, the bill can't address things like home-working, things like internet shopping that has affected bus passenger numbers hugely. People are not travelling because they are working on electronic machines at home. I would see the part of the bill that can address a lot of this are the bus service improvement partnerships. I am a great believer in partnerships. I think that partnerships between local authorities and bus companies can achieve a great deal. Local authorities can provide the track, and one of the problems that we have seen—I think that Chris mentioned this—is that the difference in passenger loss over the country is marked. It is fairly flat in many parts, but the reduction is fairly frightening in the south-west of Scotland. A lot of that is to do with access to the roads, to do with parking, to do with control, and to do with providing the track. I was at a conference, the last two days, Confederation of passenger transport conference. The whole question of roads like the M8 into Glasgow and bus operators using the M8 are finding themselves held back by the sheer amount of traffic that there is on that road. If buses were given a track, were given bus priorities, could get their passengers through much more quickly, I think that that would persuade a lot of people to leave their cars, perhaps leave their cars at park and ride sites, and travel into the city centre by bus. I think that the bill can address some of those problems through encouraging partnerships between local authorities and bus companies. George, do you or not have a chance at that one? I think that I just acknowledge that there are issues around operator involvement and things like planning and hosting schemes and various other. The best example of that is probably the new hospital, Queen Elizabeth hospital in Glasgow, where it was almost ready to open and somebody said, hold on, we've now got any buses coming to the front door. These kind of things should not be allowed to happen. One would hope that if nothing else through the bus service improvement partnerships is being proposed, that dialogue with local authorities wouldn't be restricted to only dealing with the public transport element of the council. We need to broaden out and involve people that they plan in so that you're getting a bigger picture, you're understanding the developments and quite often being able to say to them, if you put that £500 in that location, you ain't going to get a bus service, because it's not big enough to support it. That's a big part of the rural issue. Mr Frenney mentioned the report. The report outlined a hill range of different things, some of which Gavin touched on. Yes, fares are in there, I acknowledge that, but equally, quality improvements, we've actually seen from those 2 million-plus additional journeys being generated. 75 per cent of the partner on edge loss was due to things that operators have very little control or no control over. I think that I've got the hope that that elements can be picked up through partnership working. I'm quite astonished with the example given of the hospital there. Someone who was on a planning committee, a traffic impact assessment, used to be a key element of anything in the regard that it should have to public transport, so that's very disappointing, but not for this committee. I wonder in the pecking order of these things, I said, Mr Mayor, so the increasing car ownership and journey times, and it's something that Mr Booth touched on there. People don't, they're probably sooner sitting in a queue in their own vehicle rather than someone else's vehicle would tend to be the issue. Do you feel this bill is the vehicle to progress some of those issues about dedicated lanes, about traffic priority with the signals in the operation? I don't understand the technicalities, but you can trigger the signals by approach of us? I think that it's one of the areas that we have a concern on in the partnership. We endorse the partnership work, and I absolutely confirm that. The one thing that worries me is that I've worked in the industry for more years than I can count actually, but never mind the 40 plus years. There was always that seed of doubt that you were trying to work in partnership, but things wouldn't have happened. Even in partnership, sometimes it didn't happen. For me, something that maybe needs to be put in the air is an operator. You sign up to operate buses, you commit to delivering services, you get regulated by the traffic commissioner, and if you fail in those areas, Ms Akin will call you into a public inquiry, and she will deal with you, and quite severely at times as well. We didn't see the same balance. A partnership to me is that you meet, you discuss things, you meet, minds meet, and you come up with a plan. If either side commits to delivering things, you should get on and deliver it. Whilst the operator, if he fails to deliver, can be pulled up, have his license removed, there's not the same call on the local authority to say, why did you need to deliver that piece of bus priority measure or better infrastructure? So, there's something there that needs to be thought through, but by far the biggest impact on bus journeys is congestion, is car ownership, and things like government policy, for example, have they changed the fuel duty for, is it nine years now? I just think how many additional car journeys have been born on the back of that. Again, not within the gift of... Hello, but you'd expect me to meet more... Yes indeed, and so, if I may, and you know, as a relative aware that I was going to be doing this, who waited 25 minutes for a bus that didn't turn up recently, you know, you can understand the frustrations. Do you think it's disproportionate? Because my experience certainly of the, it's not a great use of bus, I use the train a lot, is quite positive. I mean, I can go and find it, particularly in Edinburgh, but also in the Inverness area, but the frustration is that, of course, if you have transport across towns and towns or congested, then speaking to bus companies, that's where the frustration lies, because they can't commit. John, Chris is quite keen to come in on the previous one, and then I'll try and take some others if I may. Chris, do you want to come in on that? It perhaps answers your second question as well. I think one of the issues with the bill is that it, or perhaps with the whole debate about the future of buses in Scotland is that there's a lot of attention is focused on operators, not a lot of, if any, attention is focused on the infrastructure. Now, you will understand if I use the rail analogy that half of the business is the trains and the services that are provided, half of it is the stuff that they run on. In our view, over the last 15 years perhaps, councils or local transport authorities have, for a number of reasons, perhaps done very little in terms of providing the infrastructure that any operator will need to run on. Edinburgh used to be held up as a kind of gold standard in the late 90s, the early 20s, of making deliberate, clear-cut political decisions to promote bus use by devoting highway space to buses. Now, that's taken a bit of a backseat over the last five, ten years, perhaps that's coming full circle, but I would probably say that very few councils really in recent years have been spending as much time and resource as we would like to see them doing on the infrastructure. Again, in our written evidence, I think that we included a graph, which we're not saying is proof, but there is a clear correlation in Edinburgh between the expansion of bus lanes and bus priorities and the growth of patronage on Lothian buses. Lothian buses was losing passengers until the late 90s, and in the late 90s, it began to see bus lanes being extended in Edinburgh. That's when Lothian began to see massive growth, so that's a critical part of it, as well as the operations, and we need to see that addressed in the bill. Maureen, yours is the next question. Thank you, convener, and good morning, gentlemen. I'm convener in the interest of openness and transparency. I should probably say that I've known George Mayer since I was a regional councillor in the mid-90s, and it's about the time that George and Maureen Lockhead were setting up the first bus. In relation to my question, which is linked to that, the panel will know that the bill seeks to amend the Transport Act 1995 to allow local authorities or companies formed by local authorities or a regional transport partnership to set up to provide local bus services. Should local authority or regional transport partnership-owned bus companies be able to provide commercial and supported services, or are they content with the limitations on the type of service they can provide that's currently set out in the bill? I tend to look at it from a slightly different view, and with my rural hat on, I think that the key metric is pounds per passenger journey, and anything that can increase the flexibility and ability of local authorities to reduce that and make services cost less is welcome, so yes, if it leads to that. Already, for example, Murray Council run Murray Dialabus, and I think that there's a bus service in the Corle that is also operated by the council as well. There are small-scale examples of that happening where the council have thought, well, we need to do something, so anything that has to increase the flexibility and council's ability to reduce costs is welcome by me. How would you envisage councils managing to reduce the cost? Well, by being able to do it a lot cheaper than tendering prices and a number of areas and a number of routes, the council will tender for a service that they support, and a bus company might not particularly be bothered about tendering for it, particularly they probably make all their bread and butter off-school services, so they'll tender for it just to make it look like some money, and they'll go in with a high tender knowing that it's not enough or knows if you don't get it, so the tender costs will be probably too high in reality, and the council will be able to undercut that by doing it themselves. Basically, sort of picking up what David said. Yes, I think that local authorities obviously have to look after their own finances, and if bus operators are bidding too high to operate supported services, then if local authority feels they can do this, then from the passenger point of view, the important thing is that the services should continue. Who's providing the service is probably of less important or who's financing the service is less important to the passenger than the fact that there is a service, so I think that we're relaxed about that side of things as long as at the end of the day it guarantees a service for our passengers. Well, I suppose that before any other members of the panel want to come in to answer that, Professor Gray, in terms of what you just said, are you taking into account the fact that there will be, I would assume, substantial start-up costs for a local authority or whoever to start a bus company? I'm not saying that it's necessarily the first choice option, but where councils are having to withdraw a number of services because they can't afford to because tender costs are going up, it seems to be at least to explore it as a sensible way forward that can reduce the costs to the council of providing services. Anything that increases flexibility and the ability to provide services at a reasonable cost should be explored. Sorry, you've got to help me just to wee bit to see if I can catch my eye if you want to come in, says me having to nominate somebody, George. I think that the bill tries to find a reasonable balance and that if the local authority feels that they are negative in the right range of offers from the tenderers, they can take things into their own hand. Some of the local authorities have had that power for many years and have never really used them. To give powers is probably quite simple, but to deliver it on the ground, think through the cost set up, the cost to invest in fleet. I'm assuming that, if you were to go down that road, you would need the local authority to do it in a level playing field in terms of operator licensing, driver training and driver licensing. It's quite often easy to say, I wouldn't be good, we're just getting the powers to do that job, but actually delivering it on the ground every day. At a time when they are already struggling financially to the extent that in some areas they've totally removed support for bus services generally and in others, they'll invest in a pittance as a budget that they get 100 doonfee transport for the Scottish Government. It's a huge risk to go down the path of saying, well, let's just turn the clock, but give them a licence and they'll get on and deliver it. It might, but I think that there's a big risk that it wouldn't work. It's clear from the panel that at the moment the bill would only allow a local authority to run a bus service under very restricted circumstances, in other words, to meet what is classed. I don't know what it means, but it is in the bill unmet need. The bill, as it stands at the moment, will not allow a local authority to run a bus service, either at arm's length or as a local council service, effectively in competition to the private sector for commercial as well as so-called non-commercial buses. The question is, do the panel believe that that very restricted circumstance should be allowed to continue in the bill or should we remove that and allow local authorities to set up bus companies, which is what local authorities, frankly, are asking for the power to do to run any service that they wish. A take on board at last two weeks ago, we had evidence from Gordon MacAe of the Society of Chief Officers of Transportation in Scotland that comes back to the point that Mr Mayer said, who basically said that the number of local authorities who would set up bus companies based on what is contained within the bill with that restriction will be somewhere between nil and not very many because it is so restricted, because frankly, why would you take the risk to only run services that make a loss? The question is, should that restriction be lifted and councils be allowed to run services right across the board? Emma, do you want to mention that from a rural perspective? First, currently, as the bill stands, we do not think that it is going to have a significant impact on an increase in services. It is not going to give us a great number of better or more bus services in rural areas. The other side of it, as you have just laid it out, is a much more difficult question. We do not want to put small businesses out of business. That is not what anyone wants to do. Having said that, bus is our lifeline service. They are an essential service. They get people to jobs. They get people to work. They get our tourists around our country. It is a vital service, so it has to be provided. If the current provision is not working for communities and in rural areas it is not working for communities, we have to look at alternative methods. It would be really interesting to see a more detailed study on what the implications of that approach might be. Chris, do you want to come in on that? As your question went on, I thought that you were probably answering it yourself. I do not think that anyone would dispute the point about if there is no commercial operator prepared to operate a service that giving local authorities the powers to do that directly. I would hazard a guess that many, if not most, councils already have transport departments. They run things like the bin lorries, they run things like the road maintenance. There is a core of an organisation there that you could see how it would expand. There is a significant difference in terms of scale, however. A number of local authorities provide non-commercial services where no operator is prepared to tender under the existing rules. The more interesting point about your question is the one about should those local authorities be able to operate commercial routes as well. That is a question that we would probably leave open. It is interesting that the Scottish Government is considering allowing the private sector operator to bid for the ScotRail franchise, along with, presumably, private operators. Is that a model that could be applied in the bus sector as well? The critical issue is that, if you are a council leader or a council chief executive, you are being asked the question, why does your council not provide commercial bus services in competition with this operator in our area who is failing? You need to carefully consider the financial implications of doing so. Bus wars are expensive to win, and they are very expensive to lose. Like Emma, how many councils would wish to venture into that area as things stand at the moment? I have my doubts. I will briefly bring in David. I am afraid that we will have to move on to the next question. It was just a final point with my rural island hat on. Community transport already run bus services not in competition with commercial services on certain routes in certain places. If it could help to drive down costs, is there any reason why councils could not do the same on a small scale if there are some economies of scale that could be made on a micro scale? I do not see any reason why we should not explore it. Anything that drives down costs for local authorities and the Government should be a good thing and should be explored. We are going to have to move on to the next question, which is John. We currently have bus quality partnerships, and the proposal is to have bus service improvement partnerships. Can any of you define for me what the difference is? Do you think that it is a step in the right direction or a step in the wrong direction? You sorted that out straight away, Gavin. Do you want to come in on that or you shook your head? No, as I said earlier, I am very much in favour of partnerships. I am not quite sure what the difference would be, but we know that the quality partnerships that were proposed have never been taken up. We are starting from a base of thinking that we must make it easier for bus companies to want to be part of a partnership and make it easier for local authorities to be part of a partnership. I am a great believer in partnerships. I believe that passengers benefit to all-round from partnerships, particularly when the bus companies are upping their game to match any investment by the local authority in infrastructure, in bus lanes and so on. Are voluntary partnerships up until now, but not statutory ones, because that has been easier to get into? No, sorry, there are statutory ones. I mean, everyone else has looked the other way when we got to this question. I think that the bus service improvement partnership tries to simplify some of the barriers or challenges or real or perceived barriers that were in there in the previous legislation. Across Scotland, we have had a number of voluntary partnerships. I think that the longest surviving one is the one in the north-east of Scotland, the quality partnership for public transport, which is the Aberdeen City and Shire. It came into being in 1998, and over the years, they have built some good projects into that and have just relaunched it this year as bus partnership alliance. We had statutory quality partnerships in the west of Scotland. The most recent one was the Fastlink SPT statutory quality partnership for the Fastlink corridor for the Glasgow city centre to the new hospital. That statutory quality partnership was probably in terms of the operational requirements placed on the operators for vehicles, on the spec of the vehicle and the operational requirements. It is probably one of the toughest for operators to meet on the line of the country. Partnership works. It cannot work. Some of the barriers to partnership previously has been the concern on the local authorities part about funding on an on-going basis. If you were looking at some big projects, it might need cash over multi-years. They guarantee that that would happen. Generally, there is some resistance to getting into the work-going partnership. Partnership is being better than the previous quality partnership. I think that it is simplifying a number of areas that were in the previous legislation. Right. It is simplifying it. That would be the main difference. That is helpful. John, before you go on, Emma is quite keen to come in. Just to say, really, you seem to be struggling with the same question that I am, which is what difference is this actually going to make to people on the ground, and that is quite hard to see at the moment. There are people nodding, Chris nodding, Gavin nodding. Can I just run into the next one then, which is linked, which is that there could be a veto on an improvement partnership if sufficient operators were opposed to it? Well, I do not think that we know or do you know what sufficient means. Have you any thinking around that? I assume that it is because one other operator would not want a kind of monopoly developing for one operator. George, it is like you are going to go on that one. I think that it is about trying to get that balance that you, when you go into this, it is a negotiation. It is a local authority or more, one or more, if it is cross-boundary. You are trying to get a negotiation going that gets to a point that you have a meeting of minds about the aspiration of that area and how you can improve the bus product across the board. I think that it is right that, somewhere in there, either party can say, well, hold on a minute, we do not feel either we are getting enough, the council to the operator, or the operator to the council. You are asking too much, but you are not offering us enough. It is a negotiation. In some way in there, if we get that point far, the balance is not right and it is tipping in one direction. Either side should be able to say, well, hold on a minute, we are not quite there. One operator could not stop it. It would need to be supported by the rest of the operators to say, well, that is going to impact us all. We are not seeing the benefit coming through for you that we anticipate for that kind of arrangement. It is business. You have to have a check and balance position. I think that some of the councils felt that it was giving too much power to the bus operator, but my experience is that, in the East End of Glasgow, there is a real monopoly on buses. It is only one company that is operating, so it would have to be the council or SPT and that bus operator. If they did not agree, it would not happen, basically. The leadership of that and then David wants to come in on that. The partnerships that I have been involved in across Scotland are open to all operators. Some operators decide not to participate, but the invitation is there. The Aberdeen one, we have small operators that come in for the outline area to be part of that partnership. The offer is there. You cannot force people, but if the partnership goes ahead and there are facilities provided that people are the operators, they are either supporting through financial contribution or improvements to the fleet, then the operators that dinner participate in the quality partnership scheme do not get the benefit. I am answering this one of my high-trans hat on, so I have three hats on today. I will go back slightly to the previous point, from the high-trans perspective. I think that a lot of the provisions in the bill with regard to things like extending parking charges and things like that are to be welcomed. The view from the partnership was that the absence of those things were not necessarily a factor in why some voluntary quality partnerships petered out. It was more the squeeze on revenue and capital due to austerity. That is a guess partnership, so it will only succeed if there is revenue and capital funding available to deliver the local authority side of things on the ground. That is a key issue. The bill can change what provisions are available to local authorities, but if they do not have the capital and revenue funding to deliver it and sustain it, then the partnerships will fail as well. There is not a big difference between what was there before and what was coming. The differences are welcome, I think, from a transport authority side in that they offer more flexibility and a wider range of elements to be brought into it, but, as most things do with transport, it comes down to funding. Let me start by declaring that I am the honorary president of the Scottish Association of Public Transport, which relates to the subject under discussion. I had jotted it on this page of my notes. I should have done it earlier, as you might point out to me. I am just looking at the bill, and this whole section is probably one of the immediate parts of its 18 pages of the bill. It essentially deletes, in the 2001 act, the bit that relates to partnership, which is more or less the same size. It is taking something away and putting something in, and when you actually put what is taken away alongside what is being put in, it is quite difficult to work out what the difference in effect is, to be blunt. Apart from the difference in terminology, I wonder whether you can help us to understand what the difference is, or tell us that you do not understand, and perhaps help us to understand what questions we should ask the Government when they come along to account for the changes that they propose? Just before you answer that, that is not a trick question. Stewart will have analysed it with a forensic microscope, so be prepared to justify your answers. Who would like to go first on that? Can I come back to that one? Yes. None today, but I will come back to that one. Oh, sorry, I thought you were going to come back on Zyrt. Can I make the observation? I have no judgment there quite a while as well, not as long as more in possibly. If George Mayer can answer that question on a pretty fundamental part of this bill, I think that we are going to have to look at this part of this bill very intensively. Indeed, A, to understand it and B, to make sure that we get a good case put to us for what is proposed, or for us to reject what is proposed altogether. George, you can definitely come back to this. I will do that. It is maybe that I am getting older and I am getting forgetful, but I like the opportunity to sit down and study it. I should make a confession, as well, if I were in confession mode. I will only play a small part, honestly, in helping when more are billed first. Right. We are going to move swiftly on David. You had sorry to say that. It was just a comment that I probably do not fully understand the differences, looting through the part. I did strike me that one of the key differences seemed to be the requirement of a local authority to make a plan and then report on it every year, which seemed to be to be adding to the workload of hard-pressed public transport units. I thought that the main difference for me was that it is actually going to add the workload and resource for local authorities, which might not be smart. No one else is jumping up and down to say that they have recognised the differences. Do you have another question on that? I really do not. I think that the silence is the answer to the question and we will answer other questions later. John, yours is the next question. I think that earlier on the phrase balance was used. With regard to the local service franchise, for instance, we are from Fife Council and I quote here, the proposals are lengthy and prescriptive and will certainly be challenging for any local authority who attempts to implement a franchise. The question is about the balance and the process of developing, auditing and indeed approving a franchise scheme. Do you think that that balance is right to justify the intervention in the bus market? I am sort of looking across the panel. Chris, do you want to go? This is specific questions about the franchising component of the bill. Perhaps it reflects, it depends on the scale of the local area. If you were trying to franchise a bus network in Edinburgh or Glasgow, for example, the implications in staffing are just to establish what you want to be in that network and the financial reality of that plan is enormous. As we said in our written evidence, it is important not to underestimate the loss of transport planning expertise that has taken place across local authorities, so I would suggest that it is not there at present. That is not to say that you cannot recreate it, but that will come with a significant financial cost. The simple answer to your question is that franchises potentially are an enormous workload that I do not think that local authorities are currently equipped to take on. I think that we have got to learn because it is so easy to say that, if nothing else, let us just franchise it, but there are really huge issues in that. It is a very complex issue, and if I am more than happy to come down here and pitch myself up in a room and meet with as many MSPs that want to chat through it, it might be possible, because we need to understand it. We need to learn for the mistakes that happened in the north of England, the nexus aspiration to franchise. Because there was no checks and balances being done, they got so far through that exercise to then find that, when it went to the final panel, the traffic commissioner-led panel, the business case was totally flawed and had spent millions of pounds to get to that point. So, I think that checks and balances are needed. There is room for a dialogue around, ultimately, if I am max a decision, but we need to make sure that it is robust. If it is going to go ahead, it is robust, it is financed properly, it is going to be there for five, seven years, is it going to last that long, because if you have done it well with bus companies in the area, it is going to happen. There needs to be checks and balances. Franchising is a nice word, but it has different meanings. The franchise that we are speaking about here is closed in the market. Only bus operators that will get a permit to run into the franchise area will be allowed to operate. There will be neither operators. If a council decides to bundle up their franchise package to include things such as schools contracts, bus services that might see an operator, full-range routes being removed for them and put out in a tender, it happens to these businesses because there is no job for them at the end of that. So, you are speaking about some companies in some areas. If you bundle that package up, people who have been in operation for 70 years, we have members who have been in operation for 90 years, and that franchise could kill them because it would pay the potential to remove their contracts. So, there is a lot to think about. When you get to the point that you are shutting businesses, you need to do that work. I am glad that others find it challenging, because I am trying to get my head around this. Can I pick up on three points? I am not going to single out five, but I am just about to. We have had a lot of response to that, but they highlight—this is something that we have heard in previous weeks—that the development of any franchising scheme would require a local authority to have access to the full bus patronage and revenue data for an area. We have heard this in previous weeks that that would need to, if you are going to make any. If the panel could comment on that, Mr Mayor, you have touched on the role that the independent panel convened by the traffic commissioner, whether you would feel that that is robust enough. If I could just do one final question—one, if I may, I think— I am quoting from the information about it, but I will save your answer from Mr Lear. The other thing that I wanted to ask was—this relates to one of your members, Mr Mayor, who shared with me that one of the challenges when I asked about a specific route, he said, well, it is not financially viable. It could, of course, perhaps be viable if we were able to incorporate the school run. That would give us some resilience at either end of the day. However, that contract has been already committed for several years hence. The limitations to some people's aspirations around the more robust services and the impact that already committed school contracts have on that. I know that that is very wide-ranging, including Mr Lear's question, for which it is important to ask. It is really challenging, and the fifth question—what about that, with a local authority? I think that if you are in that scenario, you have no option. If you look at the Manchester Transport Authority, it is spending more than £11 million to go through the exercise. Never mind running a bus, but that is just to decide what we are going to do in the franchise path. The operators involved in that have been so inundated with information requirements that they cannot even respond to. They had to go to the traffic commissioner and say, look, we need some help here, because we just cannot deal with this. We have a business to run. You have just been telling us earlier about all the data that is available on the smart ticketing, and presumably already you are making projections on routes that may or may not be run on the basis of information that you have. That information would be required to be honoured over when the operators are happy to aim that. However, it then grows to things that you do any information on, and you have to go back and say, we cannot provide you with that because we have not got it. I think that even bus operators cannot provide something that they do not have, but the information—are you aware of that position that we have heard previously about informed decisions to be made, all the data about patternage and revenue? I know that today, in some part of Scotland, a local authority will be sought way or not wherever they are discussing a bus route, or a service, or a collection of services, and that relationship will hear that dialogue. It happens and it is happening now. We provide data to a multitude of different sources, and it is just part of life. However, if you were in that franchise scenario, there are things that you would be required to hand over. However, it has the temptation to grow to an extent that you end up with things and questions that you cannot provide data because it is near the end. Quite keen to bring in Richard and Jamie, because this has straddled their area. I would like to say to Emma that the whole issue of franchising and how that might affect the rural area would be quite useful to hear from you, but maybe I could bring in Richard and Jamie if they have supplementaries to that. Earlier, I disagreed with Professor David Gray, and I apologise about that. The point is that Stratford Regional Council for my area is run by Stratford passenger transport, SPT. I was a counciller very boringly for 30-odd years, but I agree that councils should be running bus services. I have seen buses, North Lancer Council buses, sitting in the yard after they picked up the kids in the morning, and people can't get a bus fare, Ben Haar shots, wherever, down. So why shouldn't councils run buses in areas where your operators don't want to go or whatever, that bring people, let people come back out, their villages, whatever? They're stuck there, they can't get a bus. I agree with your comments, and as I said, I do apologise for my earlier disagreement. Respond to Richard Gray. If you have a partnership in place with your local authority, whether it's rural, operation or urban, there will be different things that you can hear dialogue on, and it's there beyond the means of believing that that kind of discussion around, well, listen, you've a bus that there's a school run in the morning, and it happens now, some of them are linked into the bus network. Some people don't like that, but it's mucking best use of the asset that's available to be used. So you have a school run in the morning, you go on into a run on a route, enter peak, and then you go back to the school and do the evening run for the kids going back in the evening, that happens. But that's a kind of dialogue that should be happening on the ground between the operator and the local authority, and if it's near, it's disappointing. If the new partnership scenario helps with that, then great. Emma, do you want to comment on the relation to franchising and moving in and out of areas in rural scenarios? This is quite a difficult one to get your head around for a rural area. Quite often, if you're talking about things within a local authority boundary, quite often journeys go across those boundaries, and you would often get somebody just one side of the boundary who actually just needs to go to the main population centre just inside that one. One of the things that all of this needs to be thinking about is how you ensure that those journeys still happen. When you're looking at bus partnerships, are those things taken into account? It's not just about what's happening within this area, but it's about the bigger picture for people. I've also questions about how it would impact on community transport operators who are providing a really important service and who are often able to provide a really vital service for very few people on the basis of services that are provided to slightly more people and provide some kind of balance to their services there as well, and how would they fit in the picture? It would be good perhaps for the community to hear from community transport association for Scotland as well on that side of things. Apart from that, I probably need to have a bit more of a think about it and I'd be happy to come back to the committee on that as well. David, do you want to come in? Yeah, just to say that in terms of the rule areas, I think that franchise you can only work if regional transport partnerships had a more formalised and strategic role in that. I think there are so many cross boundary routes that might. You could just think, for example, Aberdeenshire and Aberdeen City, that Nestrans would have to have a fairly important role, St Hytrans as well, Tartrans. I think that if you're going into franchising, you need to really further empower RTPs. Jamie, do you have a question? Thank you, convener, and good afternoon panel. Sorry, I'm coming in at the end of the session, but I'll ask one technical question that links on from John Finnie's questions around data sharing around specific routes, and then I'll have a more general question just to take advantage of your expertise around the panel. One of the proposals in the bill means that if an operator wants to significantly alter various service or cancel a service, and this is quite important because we get a lot of correspondence on these matters, the local authority or the regional transport partnership will be able to request specific data around the service, specifically revenue data and patronage data, and that data can then be supplied to a potential new operator of a service that's going to pick up those routes, perhaps under a subsidised model. Does the panel have any views on that, or do you think that that's a good idea? Gavin, do you want to go with that? I think that it is a good idea, because I think that in that sort of situation an incoming operator needs to have the opportunity to get off to a good start, and if they have data available, they can analyse that, and that will help them to design their networks, their routes. I think that the availability of that data makes a lot of sense in terms of the incoming operator being able to provide a service for the travelling public. George Shona add to that. Just to say that in a number of locations, if a service is being deregistered, the operators are already sharing some of that data. That's helpful. Under those proposals, they would be required to submit 12 months of very specific patronage and revenue data around number of passengers, passenger quantities, and what journeys were made, etc. It's a very specific set of data to allow the new operator to make informed decisions on whether he would want to participate in that route. I think that that's the key difference from perhaps what happens at the moment. Perhaps my final and main question is probably the conversation that we had at the beginning of this panel session about getting people on to buses, per se. One thing that I've noticed throughout this process of taking evidence and reading correspondence from people is how very centred and focused it is around the franchise regimes that we operate in specific asks around bus lanes, etc. However, as a country, we really are not being visionary enough when it comes to use of technology and infrastructure and how we spend our money. Over the past 10 years, the Government has been building a lot of concrete infrastructure. If you look at the MAM74 project, currently A9, AWPR and even things like the Queen Street Crossing, there is lots of more road space. However, nowhere have we seen any dedicated space for buses or bus type technology. By that, for example, if you look at what they are doing in Cambridge using guided buses, a new type of technology, if you look further afield at China, they are building bus bridges, which are googling, they are impressive. Are we spending our money in the right way in infrastructure when it comes to future proofing of bus networks and improving model shift? That's quite a wide-ranging question, and I'll give you each a very short answer at it. Gavin, you can start it off, we'll work that way round and come back to George. The short answer is no, we're not, and yes, there should be much more money going in to help passengers to where they want to get to reliably, safely and quickly. Emma? Yes, future proofing any bill is a difficult job, but there are incredible advancements in transport technology that are coming forward at the moment, and it's really important that the bill looks at that and thinks about how to ensure that that technology is used for the benefit of everybody living in Scotland and doesn't rely on purely a commercial basis for development, in which case it will benefit the urban areas much more strongly than it will benefit the rural areas. Chris? Yes, you'll not be surprised to hear us say that we believe more resource should be focused on the most efficient means of getting people about, and I'm not going to list those. There's an element of what you said about technology, yes, but with a note of caution, I was going to say, do not believe everything that Elon Musk suggests. There are a few very fanciful ideas there about what technology can achieve, and sometimes it's a good idea just to kind of step back a bit and have a think. David? Yes and no. Sounds like good politicians are. Sounds like that. Well, intellectually and academically, yes, we should. In the real world, and I say this to a room full of elected members, is that road and bridge building in particular is very popular with the electorate and will ensure that you get re-elected, both at national and local level. Doing stuff that drivers dislike is a pretty good way of losing an election. At M4 bus lane, for example, or I've seen, till George will know, how well bus priority is played in Aberdeen from time to time with voters and with the press and journal. Sometimes you have to make pragmatic decisions as elected members. George? I've made the surprise. I think that we do need help. That would be my biggest plea for this industry because if we're going to tackle the bus speed issue, I think that David Begg hot in the nail, the bus industry will continue to die. But I think that if you can inject some money in near to the bus companies and prove an infrastructure for the customer, making it nice or to travel, getting them through the traffic ingestion, then it helps everything. It'll help with the environmental challenge. It will reduce car journeys. I think that there is a grown awareness that we need to tackle this, but unless there's the money to do it, we need to go on. It would be hard, difficult decisions, but the right decisions. David Begg wants to come back in. Not just the money, but the political will. They both need to go hand in hand because without the political will from members and local authorities, it doesn't get done as you know. It's going to be difficult. It will be difficult, but we have to get on with it because we're at a stage now where we're looking at air quality, low emission zones. If we're going to tie into that, indeed the things that we need to do to manage traffic, it's a missed opportunity. George, what you're saying echoes, I think what I was asking in the last one was speeding up the buses, but also speeding up the information that's available to passengers to make sure that they know when they can travel at the most effective time to them in the most effective way. That's all about information technology at bus stops and apps and all the rest of it. Chris? I'm just going to pick up that, and particularly given the discussion that took place at the last session on real-time information, where you touched on the issue about compatibility, sorry, smart ticketing, I was talking about, and the difficulties were that. There's also actually an issue to do with information and real-time information that some bus operators, for whatever reason, are engaged in equating themselves with information technology that's not compatible with, for example, real-time information displays on streets. That would certainly be something that I would encourage the Scottish Government to roll into, whatever it's doing on smart ticketing, otherwise you're going to end up with a beta max VHS situation on real-time, which should be daft. Thank you very much. That brings us really to the end of our questions. George, I think you kindly volunteered to help Stuart on the definitions between the two sections and all of the committee, I'd have to say, so I look forward to seeing that. I'd like to thank you all for your time this morning and give evidence to the committee, and that now concludes our committee's business today, so therefore I close the meeting. Thank you very much.