Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Climate Change – in the Senedd at 1:32 pm on 8 February 2023.
Thank you. A number of points there. I'm familiar with the work of Partneriaeth Ogwen and have visited some of their schemes—they're an outstanding organisation. I was particularly struck by the scheme we've been funding them for to retrofit bicycles, to add a battery to them, which, particularly in rural areas, particularly hilly areas, is a really practical thing that we can do to help people who don't have easy access to a car or to public transport. We know that, for generations, we've been favouring investment into road schemes, for those people who have cars, and, over time, have been neglecting public transport, and we've seen usage decline, we've seen routes shrink and we've seen fares go up. So, that is one of the reasons why we're bringing forward our bus Bill, to redesign the service, and it's one of the reasons why we'll be publishing the roads review next Tuesday, to, over time, shift resource from car-based schemes to schemes for everyone.
In the meantime, we do have some really difficult financial challenges, and we are seeing bus schemes being withdrawn, which illustrates the problem we have with the privatised system, because there is no strategic overview to this—it's being done randomly by bus companies. And then, we have the further problem, particularly in rural Wales, where bus companies are struggling to keep their business model going, and the cost of energy is really stopping them being able to run routes, and they're not tendering for fresh services. So, we have a range of challenges facing us, but the fundamental problem is the lack of investment that we have. Because we have prioritised other things, including as part of the co-operation agreement. We could have chosen to prioritise public transport; we chose other things, and we have to do the best we can with what we've got. But, clearly, as part of our modal shift and the net-zero targets, we need to shift resource far more into public transport.