Return of ScotRail peak fares will harm public health, charity warns

Ending a trial scheme for cut-price rail fares is a “step backwards” in improving air pollution and public health, a leading asthma charity has warned, as it urged SNP ministers to reconsider.
Concerns have been raised that ending the year-long trial, which abolished peak-rate tickets, with all customers paying off-peak fares regardless of the time of travel, will force more commuters back onto the roads.
ScotRail, which is now publicly owned and under the control of SNP ministers, increased fares by 8.7 per cent this year while the temporary off-peak scheme was in place. In England fares went up by 4.9 per cent.
Joseph Carter, head of Asthma + Lung UK in Scotland said: “We are extremely disappointed that ScotRail’s off-peak fares trial will end. Any action to encourage people to take use the train helps us tackle air pollution and improve public health, so this sadly is a step backwards.
“We hope that the Scottish government will think again, make tackling air pollution a priority and encourage more people to use the train, rather than make public transport too expensive for them.”
John Swinney, the first minister, insisted that a Scottish government target to cut car usage by the end of this decade could still be met despite the scheme ending on September 27. He said the £40 million a year price tag for the scheme meant it was “not justified to continue the pilot at that cost”.
Swinney said he believed the Scottish government could still meet its target of reducing the number of kilometres travelled by car by 20 per cent by 2030, but expert advisers at the Climate Change Committee warned in April that it would be “extraordinarily difficult” for this target to be achieved.
Asked directly if the target could still be met, Swinney said: “Yes, I think it can.” However, he added that this “obviously requires changes in behaviour from members of the public” and that achieving this was “not focused simply on one particular policy intervention”.
Swinney said that although the peak fares pilot had “demonstrated a limited amount of success”, and had boosted rail passenger numbers to some extent, it had “not delivered the modal shift we had hoped would be the case”.
He added that it had not been possible to continue with the scheme as it required a large amount of public investment to work, and the Scottish government was operating under significant financial constraints. “We simply cannot continue to invest those resources because the money is not available to continue that subsidy,” he said.
Fiona Hyslop, the transport secretary, hinted that the scheme could return in the future, if finances permitted. Hyslop told BBC Radio Scotland that ministers could be “prepared to go back to this” as she conceded it would take years to shift commuters from cars to public transport.
She added that ministers had twice extended the trial, which was initially only due to run for six months, in an attempt to give it the “best chance of success”.
Hyslop added: “If we are using public funding and public subsidy to cut prices, we need to demonstrate it is having the impact that the pilot was meant to achieve, which was to try to shift more people to rail, to choose to use rail, not their car.
“That hasn’t shown evidence to the level that would justify that level of investment, and we are living in tough financial times. With the UK government’s austerity as it is just now and continuing, it is very difficult to justify.”
Mick Lynch, general secretary of the RMT union, said that scrapping the scheme was a “retrograde step” from the Scottish government.
He argued that it undermined ministers’ ambitions to cut car use and tackle climate change. Lynch said: “RMT has long called for the off-peak fares trial to be made permanent and the decision to scrap the trial will be a significant disappointment for many passengers.
“The return of peak fares, inflated by this year’s 8.7 per cent fare increase, will make rail travel unaffordable for many and push people into cars. The Scottish government should be investing in making rail travel affordable, accessible and reliable and it should rethink this short-sighted and damaging decision.”