Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Climate Change – in the Senedd at 2:09 pm on 2 March 2022.
A modern metro system is an integral part of a joined-up public transport system. It's a part, it's only a part, and there needs to be other parts as well. We need to integrate the bus services, which are the workhorse of the public transport system and carry the majority of people, along with active travel for that final bit of the journey. We know that over half of all car journeys are under five miles. These are currently being driven, clearly, and they could be done by foot and by bike. A system that links all these up into a modern metro system has significant potential, along with behaviour change interventions, to achieve modal shift, which is part of our transport strategy and part of our net-zero plan. The vision of the metro is to provide a turn-up-and-go service. People will do the easiest thing to do. Currently, we have designed a system where the easiest thing to do is to drive, and we need to change that so the easiest thing to do is to use public transport and active travel. The investment we're seeing in the south Wales metro, which is the largest civil engineering project of its kind in Wales at the moment—over the next few years we'll begin to see the manifestation of that in a major way—will be a significant step forward alongside the other measures that we're working on.