4. Statement by the Deputy Minister for Economy and Transport: 'Llwybr Newydd: a new Wales transport strategy'

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:27 pm on 23 March 2021.

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Photo of Lee Waters Lee Waters Labour 4:27, 23 March 2021

Can I first of all pay a very sincere tribute to Jenny Rathbone for the campaigning she's done on this agenda throughout her entire time as a Member of the Senedd? She has been ahead of the pack as a persistent advocate for the need to shift to sustainable transport, and so I am pleased that she is here to welcome this report as a realisation of many of the themes that she's been calling for successive Welsh Governments to take up. I'm pleased on her behalf that she's able to be here to be part of this joint endeavour.

On her points on the bus network, as I said, there are two things going on. One is that TfW are modelling what a comprehensive local bus network would look like, and we're going to be building that, hopefully, over the next Government—I hope we'll be building that into the franchises as it is designed, to make sure that there is a coverage for the whole area, so that it is a realistic alternative for most people. But in that mix is that concept of what a modern bus service looks like, and we are piloting, as Jenny Rathbone knows, our Fflecsi demand-responsive bus service. We're doing that in Newport and we're doing it in different settings across Wales, some rural, semi-rural and urban, to see how it responds in different settings. That is about having a non-scheduled bus, an on-demand bus, which can then either do direct door-to-door drops or can feed into a spine of a scheduled service. We've seen that through the Bwcabus project for some years in north Carmarthenshire and southern Cardigan. It's an updating of that concept with modern technology, and the early results of the pilots are very encouraging. In fact, it is proving too popular for the service we've got in place. So, I think the notion about what a bus service looks like will evolve quite quickly, and I think we are at the vanguard of developing some of those different models. In terms of what fuel they use, that is a good question. Clearly, we'd want to minimise the impact of fuel, so we are looking at electric buses, we are looking at smaller buses, and I believe biofuel is also part of the mix in some settings. She rightly points to hydrogen being a proven carrier of energy that is useful for battery storage, and that's part of the work that we are developing through our hydrogen plan.

And then her point on the cultural shift needed for cycling to school. If you look at the announcement we've made on active travel this year, the schools work is perhaps the most important and the most challenging, and getting education departments and transport departments to see this as a joint endeavour is a challenge for us. That's not traditionally something education has been interested in doing, and that needs to change. I must pay tribute to Cardiff Council. Under the leadership of Huw Thomas and Caro Wild, they've been doing excellent work over the last couple of years—really, the leading authority in Wales on this—putting—. Not only have they been successful in attracting Welsh Government funding, but putting significant funding of their own in, and putting hard measures—the infrastructure measures—alongside the soft measures, the behaviour change interventions, particularly in schools. And that, I think, is going to reap dividends, because you do need to have the hard and the soft together. That is one of the weaknesses and challenges of our approach as a Welsh Government. It is harder for us to find revenue funding than it is to find capital funding in this area, and we know that without both we're not going to be able to achieve what we want to achieve. So, we hope this year we will be able to dedicate about 10 per cent of the £75 million towards behaviour change work, but it needs to be more than that in future years to meet the challenge Jenny Rathbone has rightly set.