A Sustainable Transport Network

Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Climate Change – in the Senedd at 2:12 pm on 18 May 2022.

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Photo of Lee Waters Lee Waters Labour 2:12, 18 May 2022

Well, I can reassure Jack Sargeant that one of the consequences of working with Ken Skates for two and half years is that I absolutely understand the need to work cross-border and to work closely with the metro mayor. I can assure you that that's what we're doing. Good relationships were set up when Ken was in charge of the transport portfolio and they have been sustained, I'm pleased to say. In fact, the north Wales transport commission we've set up under Lord Burns has on it a member from Nottinghamshire council, as well as Ashley Rogers, chair of Growth Track 360, to show that we absolutely understand the east-west nature of transport links, particularly in the north-east, and we continue to make sure that that is central to the planning that TfW is doing.

Jack Sargeant is absolutely right, we need a range of networks and they need to make—. The right thing to do and the easiest thing to do—. At the moment, we have a 70-year legacy of a transport system where we've made it easy to drive and more difficult to use public transport. And unless we turn that on its head and make public transport the easy, obvious, pain-free, cost-effective way to make our daily journeys, we're never going to meet our climate targets. And I hope that the Burns commission will do a practical job of work to set up a pipeline of schemes and create the delivery of relationships in the north and that those can then be achieved at pace.