Diolch, Deputy Presiding Officer. It's a pleasure to subscribe to and to contribute to this debate this afternoon. The key tenet of this debate, as Lee Waters has alluded to, recognises the importance of a modern public transport network to relieve pressure on our road network. I don't think this is controversial. Well, it certainly shouldn't be. It seems common sense, but how often over recent decades has the eye been taken off the transport ball? This has been a long-standing problem, not just with one Government but many Governments over many years and many decades.

It stands to reason that if we can get more people on buses and trains—and trams, indeed—there'll be more space on our roads for motorists who really do need to use them. Of course, at the same time, the development of driverless cars, which we discussed in this Chamber recently, should further increase road capacity as computer technology reduces the stopping distances needed on our roads, and so we can increase the capacity there, but that's for another debate.

I would like to stress that I don't see this as being about penalising the motorist, and I think there will be journeys where the car has been king and will be king, particularly in rural areas, where it's always difficult to plug some of those gaps. But, quite simply, not enough has been done to support public transport over the years and decades following the second world war up to the present day. So, we warmly welcome plans to develop a south Wales metro, which is in the motion—the first phase, at any rate—and also the north Wales metro, which has also been mentioned in the phrasing of the motion. But we need to move on from the concept to shovel-ready projects, and to get on with the job.

Clearly, parts of the metro map will be easier to deliver than others—a tram link, often talked about, from Cardiff city centre to Cardiff bay, for instance, perhaps the reinstatement of other tram lines across the capital, and making use of the existing Valleys lines, because the infrastructure is already there. Trams are great, of course, because they can run on rail and road and they are completely clean in terms of the urban emissions that aren't released, unlike buses and other transport. 

Of course, where we really need better infrastructure is in the rural areas I mentioned earlier, where there is currently a very patchy public transport service. We know full well just how expensive reinstating that rail infrastructure can be—far pricier in the short term than bus services. I know that some work has been done over the years in terms of reinstating the Wye valley line in my area from Chepstow to Monmouth, but it would prove prohibitively expensive, as would some other rail schemes.

I often jest that in 1950 you could travel from my village of Raglan to Cardiff by train with ease—how we long for those days. We talk about progress—in some ways, it doesn't seem that we have progressed. Sixty years on, that service is not there, and it was much easier to do. Today, in my constituency, it's actually very easy to commute to Cardiff in the morning from Monmouth by bus and rail, but the problem, as Lee Waters said, is actually getting back—that's not so straightforward. I think the last bus from Newport is at around 5.30 p.m., maybe a little bit after that, and at about the same time in Abergavenny. So, you're then stuck; it doesn't give you sufficient time to get from your place of work to Cardiff Queen Street, to Cardiff Central, to Newport in time for the connection, so you're then reliant on cabs, hitch-hiking or lifts from friends, so that simply isn't good enough.

Cabinet Secretary, these problems need to be ironed out to make public transport the viable option that we all want it to be. That's not to say that we haven't seen some positive developments over the last few years, with some new stations and others on the horizon—a new station promised at Magor. I've previously raised the possibility with you of a hub at the Celtic Manor next to the proposed conference centre, and the more I think about this the more I think it is a solution to a number of our problems in south-east Wales at least. I know that you're amenable to this. It would be a matter then of getting passengers from Newport to the hub and then worrying about the second phase of their journey from the hub on to rural areas and beyond after that. So, it would potentially break down the current barriers that are there. 

And, of course, it's not just about the transport—ticketing is all-important as well, and the holy grail of integrated, seamless ticketing, a great idea in practice but a devilishly difficult thing to achieve, as Professor Stuart Cole once memorably said when we were considering the issue on the previous economy and transport committee in the last Assembly. New technology can play an important part in helping deliver these objectives. Apps on phones are more likely to keep up to date than conventional bus timetables, which are usually days or weeks out of date, if not even worse. And what will happen if we don't act? Well, we've seen the problems on the M4. I think my reticence about the new M4 is well known. Leaving aside the environmental issues, I think the past has shown that if we simply rely on road building without developing public transport at the same time then we will end up in severe problems. 

Deputy Presiding Officer, I think the last paragraph of the motion is all-important. Transport for Wales must have power, it must have the teeth that Lee Waters alluded to, to succeed and not just be a talking shop, and I think the devolution of the Traffic Commissioner for Wales is a very good start. But let's get on with the job and deliver a public transport system in the future that Wales can be proud of.