Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee

Welcome back to this meeting of the Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee. We are continuing with our scrutiny of Transport for Wales, and we welcome back James Price and Geoff Ogden from Transport for Wales. We're now going to focus on the future of TfW, and I'll ask Janet Finch-Saunders to ask the first question.

Thank you, Chairman. This is about governance arrangements and development. On 20 October 2021, the Deputy Minister for Climate Change told us that bus passenger numbers were 66 per cent to 70 per cent, and rail 65 per cent, of pre-COVID levels. What is the current situation, and is it feasible to expect the public transport sector to achieve the targets of 7 per cent of trips to be made by public transport by 2030, and 13 per cent by 2040, which is of course up from a baseline of 5 per cent? What work are you undertaking with communities across Wales to understand if they want a different timetable, even, to that in place pre pandemic?

This is a really big question. Maybe if we try and break it down a bit and start with a simple answer and then I'll explain the rationale for my simple answer.

So, is it achievable? I think the answer has to be 'yes'. And has COVID made any difference? This might shock you, what I'm about to say—I would say 'no', not in a real sense. And the reason for that, particularly for Wales, is, if you look at the proportion of transport that is carried out via public transport in Wales compared to somewhere like London, we are very low. Public transport is always in the margins. Public transport and active travel, even, are in the margins, and therefore even if 20 per cent of travel completely disappeared as a result of COVID, by simply doubling our market share, which is very low to start with, we will more than make up for that travel that has disappeared. That is very different from somewhere like London, where nearly all travel is on public transport in the first place. So, I think that is something that is really important for people to remember, and there's a lot of stuff that is written in the mainstream media that is basically written about London and that is not referenceable, I don't think, to lots of other parts of the UK.

So, the numbers say that, if it was achievable before, it's achievable now. I think the analysis that we have done suggests very strongly, actually, that if we are to meet any of the climate change targets that the UK Government and the Welsh Government have, then, unless someone else is going to massively over-achieve against their targets, it's essential that we do hit those targets. In terms of hitting them, though, I think there are a number of aspects to consider here, and I'll try not to drill into too much detail and try and keep it reasonably strategic. The first one is that we need to provide a set of product offerings that people want to use and that people are able to use, and that's maybe easier said than done.

The second is that I think, even with all of the positive carrots, if you like, that we can offer, there will probably also be a need for some—I don't really like to use the term—sticks to encourage people away in some instances and at some times from the private car. That needn't be through mechanisms like road pricing, albeit some form of sustainable vehicle like that might be helpful, but there would be other ways of discouraging people from using the car whilst encouraging people to use public transport.

Then I guess the third part of all of that for me is that—and this is the real challenge for TfW—we need to be using the resources that we have, which are obviously constrained, in the most effective way to move people efficiently. One of the things that is a bit distressing at the minute is that typically on a Sunday on the Marches line we are already over capacity. When we bring our new services in in the future, with a 65 per cent increase in capacity, yes that's going to solve the problem, but my view is that that will fill up quite quickly as well. So, the thing that I'm beginning to think about now is what is the sustainable model for the level of growth that we want to see on public transport. As part of that, I think we need to, in a sustainable way, get our cost base down a bit. Lots of people before me would have said things like that, but lots of people before me weren't in a climate change emergency, I guess.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you very much, James. Huw.

Thank you, Chair. James, I wonder if I can ask you—. You mentioned there carrots and sticks; some of the mechanisms we might have at hand are carrot and stick at the same time—things like, for example, prioritising bus and mass transport through things such as fast buses, dedicated lanes in and out of Newport, Cardiff, our big cities, because they squeeze individual car transport with people and it makes more attractive the offer where you can say, 'Well, it's going to be 10 minutes faster if you're sitting in the bus, because there'll be a dedicated bus lane.' Can you just tell us a little bit more about some of those—making it more attractive, but also whether you agree that some of this needs squeezing some people if not out of cars entirely, out of cars so regularly, so often for routine journeys?

I do fundamentally agree with the statement that you just made, absolutely. And there's another point I should have made, which is that until our capacity is all used up, the capacity that we've already bought, if you like, we are in a really unusual situation that the more successful the policy of getting people to use public transport is, the less it will cost you, because we'll have more revenue. And that's quite an unusual position. But that only goes so far, as I said before, because at some point all the carriages are used up and you need to buy some more, there's a step up of capital and then the same thing happens again.

In terms of things like bus lanes, bus rapid transit, the reallocation of road space for walking and cycling, I think everything you've said is absolutely really true. If anyone has any time and wants to look at it, I think the term internationally is still 'gold-standard bus rapid transit', which is fully segregated bus rapid transit, that is capable of moving people just as quickly as urban rail and, in some instances, at much better value for money. It's got a bad reputation in the UK because the UK typically tries to do it on the cheap, and mix the bus rapid transit with normal traffic, and then it's just bus.

We are doing lots of work in this area—that's point 1—certainly in areas like the Burns commission area and in north-east Wales, but I think it would be wrong for me not to point out the obvious local-level political challenges in doing that. So, most of the networks that we would be talking about here are not in control of a national body or even a regional body; there will be local authority roads. As we know, it can be very difficult—politically very difficult—to drive through some of those things. I think evidence says that a well-designed scheme, two years after it's implemented, is typically welcomed, but it's not welcomed in the run-up to it. I think that is something that is beyond TfW's capability to deal with, but it is something that is worthy of some scrutiny and some thought.

Okay. Thank you. Jenny.

We'll come back to some of the issues around the Burns review and the metro schemes slightly later in the agenda. I just wanted to ask you, in light of what you've just said that COVID is marginal to your plans, which is really interesting, whether you think the modal shift targets are ambitious enough in light of the climate emergency, as opposed to easily achievable.

I don't think they're easily achievable. That's the first point. I guess the point I was making is that, because of the small proportion of people who use public transport, I don't think that COVID is anywhere near as disastrous as people think it is. It just provides a bit more capacity for us to get more people out of their car. In terms of—. Sorry, can you repeat the second part of the question?

I think it was really about, 'Are these ambitious enough?' Obviously, I represent Cardiff Central, an urban environment. I appreciate that the challenges are rather different in a rural environment, but in an urban environment, people who continue to travel into work or school by car are killing some of our community with air quality, brutally, and obviously they're not doing any good for future generations' management of climate change. So, I really want to know how you're working with stakeholders to ensure that the vast majority of people travelling to school or work—obviously, these are regular journeys—are built into your targets, once the options are there, once we've increased our capacity.

Understood. I'll bring in Geoff in a bit on this as well, because it's Geoff's team that is doing lots of the analytics behind it. I guess on the first point, do we think we need to be more ambitious in terms of the climate change targets, the answer to that I think is in two parts. Firstly, we can replicate and endorse the targets that Welsh Government have. They are evidence based and replicable. But, all future forecasts are based on a series of assumptions, and it depends what you assume on electric vehicle take-up, for example, as to how many people you need to get to move. There is a scenario where we need to be more ambitious than the currents targets are to hit the climate change targets, but all of the figures in all of the documents are there or thereabouts.

What I do think is true to say is that it's easier to achieve some of the modal shift in certain parts of Wales than it is in other parts, and I absolutely think we ought to do everything that we can to take advantage of any advantage that we already have. I wouldn't normally say that, because that would normally go against equality and trying to deliver equally across Wales, but given climate change, the impact will be felt globally and right across Wales, but the behaviours are very local that drive it. If we've got a local opportunity to change behaviour, then I think we should do it. I think one of the big things we think there's an opportunity on is active travel in urban areas, but not just urban areas, shorter-distance rural routes as well, and having a sense of a redesigned and safe network that people understand is really important in that. That is one of the things that TfW is supporting not just Welsh Government but also local government on. Geoff, do you want to add anything to that?

It's an interesting question whether they are challenging enough. I think they are challenging, which is what's been said, and it's going to take a number of different levers and ways of achieving those targets there. I guess one of the things that we're doing as we're developing the programmes is, when we've got a reasonable idea of what the programme might look like from a macro level, we're then taking it through an assessment of what difference it will make to decarbonisation. But, to be fair to everybody across Wales, I think we do need to translate it into the regional agendas, because, as you've said, it's very much about different approaches in different areas. I think the Wales transport strategy recognises that the rural pathways is an important one in this respect, and that actually it's not going to be as easy to move people to public transport in as large numbers as in urban areas perhaps. We need to keep working on that narrative and the common understanding supporting the logic of how we're getting there. I don't know—is it challenging enough? I'd just go back to I think it is pretty challenging, and that's what we're trying to do—meet those targets that are already published.

Okay. Because obviously they don't look that brilliant when you look at them: 7 per cent by public transport up from 5 per cent by 2030, and only 13 per cent by 2040. It doesn't feel that challenging, but I appreciate in some areas, in rural areas, that may look very challenging. But on the other hand, you've got electric bikes, which definitely expand the possibility for active travel in rural areas. So, it's how can we ensure that we are really pushing you hard, as well as working collaboratively on getting the behaviour change.

I think, beyond this split between the different modes, if we just look at the sustainable transport figure—walking, cycling and public transport—then effectively that's going up by 50 per cent by 2040 from a 2019 baseline. If we think about the 2025 figure, that's 10 per cent up, and the middle figure, 2030, is 20 per cent above. So, when you think about it's getting 50 per cent more people into sustainable transport than are currently using it, and you're doing more trips by that, alongside also reducing the number of trips as well through things like remote working et cetera, I guess that's where I see the challenge. But, yes, the actual percentage by different mode is a different thing again.

Can we bring Huw in here? He wants to just come in. And then maybe, Jenny, if you want to I'll come back to you, and I think maybe Janet wants to come in on behaviour change as well. We'll come to Huw first.

Thanks, Jenny. It's just building on the point that Jenny just touched on. I'm interested to know how much the targets are granulated down geographically. Because you could do a lot on this in terms of the main routes in and out of our big cities, where there are big metro developments et cetera, and those are very, very important, but are we actually breaking this down so that we say, in Carmarthen, in Bridgend, in wherever, we have separate targets? Because I'd love to know what the baseline is of public transport travel within my area and what the target is for that to push up. James made the point that we're starting from a very low base. Well, maybe we should be looking at that granulated targeting that says, 'Well, where we've got an exceptionally low base, there needs to be an exceptional drive with some piloting and innovation and funding going in to shift that modal investment and the planning.' Some of this is outwith TfW's control, but the whole gamut needs to be looked at. Do we have that baseline data and are the targets geographically granulated as well?

Geoff, do you want to take this?

I'm not aware of them. Some local authorities might have their own targets in their own respect, but I'm not aware of that as a general theme. I think anything that allows people, officers, Cabinet Members, et cetera to understand how this plays out for them and what part they can realistically do to achieve it is a positive step, I would say.

So, Geoff, that raises the question, then: the targets that we do have that Jenny referred to, those are aggregated targets, they're clearly based on assumptions of investment in metro and so on—. I guess the question to you both, as TfW and transport experts is: shouldn't we, at least on the regional footprints, be having granulated targets there so that we know what the region is doing?

So, for me, I think this is exactly where we need to be going to, and I think it's more granular rather than regional, actually. It's corridor by corridor.

Absolutely.

And that's the case in transport planning as well, and we are getting into this. So, when we will be working out, particularly as we go forward, how we believe that our interventions are going to make a difference, they will be done on a corridor-by-corridor basis. When—yes, I'll say 'when' again, I won't say 'when and if'—when we move towards a more controlled bus network, for example, we will want to be making sure that we do not have a competing bus and rail network on the same corridor unless it's complementary, for example. And all of that needs to be done at that level. I think we've got the modelling capability to do it now. I think—sorry, I'm saying 'I think'. I know that the gap that you are pointing out is that we've got a top-down climate change target, and what we now need to do is have a series of bottom-up plans that at least meet it and, potentially, actually exceed it.

Thanks. Okay.

And I think—. Sorry—

No, that's okay. Come in, Geoff. That's fine.

I was just going to say I guess we're looking at that at a regional level, as I said, but I think, getting it at a more granular level, I would just—. We've got to move on this quickly, but I think, going back to the point earlier, some co-design on this rather than, 'Right, here's the local target'—. It needs to be realistic, taking into account the things that we were talking about earlier about the practicalities of the challenge in different areas. But, yes, I think it would be a positive step.

Yes, and I'm sure that's a sentiment we'd all endorse as well. Jenny.

Did you want to bring Janet in at this point?

Janet, you indicated that you might want to raise something under behaviour change.

Yes, just talking about the forecast and the regional transport models, and the impact that remote working is having on rail transport. How are you going to be able to predict that going forward? That's No. 1. And also, there's been a boom in the number of visitors who holiday in Wales; this was raised with me this morning. A couple of things there. What steps are you taking in my constituency in Aberconwy to ensure that there are added public transport links to top destinations like Beddgelert, Betws-y-Coed and Llandudno? But one thing that's been raised with me, with more and more people, with the active travel Act and more travel integration—sometimes a train will only have two spaces for a bike, but you might have five young people waiting at the stations with their bikes to jump on a train. How are you taking that into account? And the same goes for disabled people. I frequently hear that there's just not enough capacity for disabled people on trains, and I just wondered how you're going to deal with that going forward. Thanks.

There's about four questions in one there. So, James, I want you to address each of them, obviously, but maybe we'll need to be, you know—

Quicker. Okay. So, I think, at a headline level, those questions go to the heart of a really difficult issue, which is, even with all of the additional money that we are spending, we are still going to run into capacity problems on the network, and the difficult question is how we ration—well, is it right to ration capacity, or should we spend more money, I guess is the first thing. But, at some point, money will always come to an end, and then it's how we plan and how we ration against all of those points you've made.

I think what we want to do in the future is to be much more demand-led than we've been in the past. If you're thinking about rail, and, to a certain extent, bus, actually, having a more what I would call 'homogenous' fleet, where, basically, we're running the same type of fleet around the whole network outside of metro areas—. That will mean that we should be able to respond to events—hot weather, the tourist season—much better than we can today. But that will require us to work in a way that the railway has never worked before, but that's what I'm asking the team to start to think about. So, when we know that it's going to be hot weather in a month's time, we should be planning to run longer trains, once we have our new trains in the area where we know we are going to have higher demand. The flip side of that, of course—they have to come from somewhere else. Now, so long as we make those decisions broadly right, that will be an aggregate benefit to Wales as a whole, and I think that will be a better position.

And in terms of the disabled and the bike issue, again, there's always a trade-off—how much space do you provide for disabled people? I think that they should never have to wait or be—. Well, it's illegal, and we shouldn't do it. So, we should always be allowing people on, and we need to provide enough space for that. Most of this is at the discretion of the guard on the train. So, even when there are two spaces, we can have more. What we need to be doing is training our guards to be more strategically engaged in what we're trying to do as a nation, I think.

Okay. Thank you for that. Many of those points, actually, were raised this morning as well, in the stakeholder session, as I'm sure you can imagine. Geoff.

On the tourist side of things, and the visitor side of things, we've been doing some good work with Gwynedd and others around the Sherpa services in north Wales and Snowdonia, to try and address some of the challenges that were seen last summer about car access. So, again, we are doing what we can to support with evidence and expertise as best we can, to allow those things to be dealt with.

Good point. Thank you. Jenny.

Just going back to the Net Zero Wales requirement to have a 57 per cent reduction in car journeys, and your need to balance cost and availability of spaces, what work are you doing with stakeholders, for example employers or schools, to not just understand their plans for remote working, but also for flexi working, so that people don't always have to turn up at the office at 9 o'clock in the morning and leave at 5 o'clock, or whatever it might be? On particular days, somebody in a particular team will need to come in for the weekly team meeting, at time x. But, clearly, there are ways in which, by planning together, you could maximise the—

I agree. I agree. So, I don't think we're doing anywhere near—. I was just wondering whether I should say what I'm about to say, just in case it turns into something—a stick to beat me. I don't think we're doing anywhere near enough in this space, honestly. And I think that is because it's very difficult to do. Maybe in the past, it hasn't been so necessary as it will be as we move forward. And we're working in industries that, typically, have thought that they run a timetable and everyone fits around it, which is not how it's going to be in the future. So, that is an area that we will absolutely get into. We are doing it—it's not that we're not doing anything. We are certainly having conversations with employers about when they're bringing people back to the office, when they're not. But going to the next level, about what time, and, in fact, trying to influence employers, both through conversation, but also through pricing and different structures, about how we can even things out through the day—that's a whole new area we need to get into.

Another area, aligned to that, I was thinking about just in the week, and this is literally just me thinking this through, so you shouldn't place any weight on this, but remember I mentioned that the Marches services on a Sunday can be overwhelmed really very quickly? Potentially, part of a response to that might be to run a TfW coach service in parallel that's priced slightly differently from the rail service, as an example. Now, typically, if I said that, people would say, 'You've gone mad—we don't run coach services', but I think the space we need to get ourselves into is that we are about sustainable mobility; we're not about trains or buses or walking or cycling—it's whatever is necessary to sustainably move people.

Okay. So, beyond talking to employers in shops, how much are you using the data we all hold in our hands every time we leave the house?

So, a lot, and we're doing more and more. Geoff could talk a bit to that, but I'm much more confident we're at the leading edge on that.

Yes, we're using mobile phone data quite a bit, so in terms of the cell information from different cells as the mobile signal goes around. We've also been doing some pilots around the actual use of GPS data—anonymised GPS data from phones—which is more expensive to get hold of. So, we're just working out—perhaps going back to the conversation about innovation earlier—the extent to which it helps us with local considerations. But, yes, we are doing everything that we can to understand. And with new technology on the trains coming in et cetera, there'll be the opportunity to use some of the more automated systems through that to help us. So, there's a massive piece around using the information that we've got and really making some evidence-led decisions, and it helping us take things forward too.

Excellent. Okay, thank you for that. Huw.

Thanks, Chair. I want to move on to affordability and pricing, both of buses and trains. Where are we at the moment in terms of price increases this year? There was a cap put on of, I think, 3.8 per cent from 1 March on rail tickets. What about bus prices? How is this playing into the overall rise in prices and cost-of-living affordability? What's your take on this and how will it affect what we've just been talking about, which is trying to get more people on buses and trains?

Yes, so the broad picture in Wales for rail and bus is that a significant proportion of the fares that most people would use every day on rail are regulated. They're not all regulated, but a significant proportion are, and the actual policy position of all of the UK in this space is that fares should go up by retail price index plus 1 per cent. Now, over time, that means that prices will be getting more expensive, obviously.

The reality of that policy position, certainly for most of the years I've been involved is that not all parts of the UK—and I think Wales has been at the forefront of this, but all parts of the UK have either not applied RPI or only applied RPI, rather than actually going with the RPI plus 1. But even RPI, at a time when you are trying to encourage more people to use it, is difficult, and RPI at a time when many people's wages are not keeping pace with RPI is very difficult. And, of course, because of the deregulated nature of the bus network in Wales, there is no regulation on bus prices at all, so outside of TrawsCymru services, operators can charge what they see fit, and I'm guessing that they will be applying RPI plus wherever they can. So—

And they, of course, are under pressure as well from rising fuel prices and—

And wages themselves.

Yes, indeed. Before I go on to where we might go in the future with pricing and affordability, and it was a big theme of our meeting this morning with a lot of stakeholders and regular user groups and so on—affordability. It wasn't just some of the well-known reforms that there might be—streamlined ticketing and this, that and the other—it was actually to do with how much it costs to travel and how it compares in terms of buying a cheap car and so on. Well, no car is cheap at the moment the way that fuel prices are going anyway. But can I just draw a parallel and just test your view on this? There's a parallel discussion going on here in terms of what we do with energy in response to rising costs of gas and oil and diesel and this, that and the other. One stream of thought is that we should be opening up fracking and looking for more sources of fossil fuels, and the other one is that we should be going hell for leather, actually, with renewables and marine, tidal, and this, that and the other.

There is a parallel here in terms of the field of transport. There are big arguments I can see coming from people, saying, 'Make the prices cheaper at the petrol pump', and it's understandable. This was the old Top Gear argument that they used to marshal on Parliament regularly, with a petrol price escalator. The corollary of that is, actually, you superinvest into public transport to bring prices down. It's slightly unfair—maybe we should be asking the Minister this—but do you have a view? Do you have thoughts on that?

Personally, I would agree that public transport—. I don't think all public transport, but I think that, in certain situations, public transport is too expensive, and, if you push me further on that, long-distance rail is expensive. And actually, even short-distance public transport, if there's a family, can be expensive. So, I used to often—. I will say this to the team; when my kids were younger—we live at the very bottom of the south Wales Valleys—if four of us went into town, it would cost something like £25 to go on the train. When you haven't got that much money and it costs you a fiver to drive, or even £20 to go in a taxi, you're going to go in a taxi. Of course, if there's one of you, who is commuting for work, then the individual price is not that much and it's quite cost effective in comparison to everything else. But I think the more general point is that the more we can fill up the capacity that we have, the lower the price can be in general terms, because the subsidy can come down, and the more efficient as an industry we can become—and we've got some very inefficient regulatory activities built into what we do—the lower the price can become. And in parallel with all of that, I think there's a conversation around the positive and negative externalities of different types of travel and what the public purse response ought to be to that.

So, can you let us into any insights into what interesting discussions may be going on within Government about reviews of fares as we come out of the pandemic and try to effect this modal shift, not only in rail, but perhaps longer term, in terms of buses as well, or joint ticketing?

Okay. So, I'm happy to talk about what we're trying to do in terms of products and things like joint ticketing. What I don't think it's appropriate for me to get drawn on at all is any policy support we are providing the Welsh Government in terms of making things more affordable. That's for the Minister.

I did my best.

But I can talk to some of the things we have done already in that space, so—. And if I start with that, on the rail side, you will see some very strange historic pricing that is built into the system, even in Wales. So, historically, the Heads of the Valleys had a slightly higher pricing structure than the lower Valleys, and the north Wales coast had a higher pricing structure than the south Wales coast. Believe it or not, the reason for that goes all the way back to pre nationalisation and built-in differentials at that point that have then simply been exacerbated through RPI and RPI plus. So, we, as an authority, and as an operator, have been trying to even things up across Wales, without increasing the price for anyone, and that is by modelling that shows that when we bring the price down more people use it. So, we have done—. We can write to you on what we've done. We have done some things to bring the price, relatively speaking, in the Heads of the Valleys area, down, relative to lower Valleys, as an example. In terms of integrated ticketing, to be clear, our aspiration would be that—. Well, I would go further than tap-in, tap-out, but our aspiration is to have something equivalent and hopefully better, eventually, to tap-in, tap-out on all parts of the public transport network in Wales, where, in a similar way that you have in London, you have a capped fee.

In terms of what we are doing, there are pilots going to be run over the next 12 months for both bus and rail, starting in the south-east Wales area, simply because it has been easier to lean on the public-sector-owned bus companies that exist in Wales—so that's Newport Bus and Cardiff Bus—and there's a plan to try and bring that together as a pilot next calendar year. And again, we could write to you with our plans on that. I think what would really accelerate our ability to do that is bus reform in terms of moving to a regulated marketplace, because the technology is not a problem—that's very simple; we've fitted validators in all buses and in most of the south Wales stations, and they're going in right across Wales. The difficulty is getting commercial bus operators to accept a product that is not one they created.

Okay. Chair, I know we're pressed for time here. I'm wondering whether we write to James for further thoughts on the bus reform programme and the review of funding, the bus fleet, all of this, because they're all pertinent now, because it's the next stage, but it's probably 10 minutes of itself in questioning, I suspect. Unless there are any brief thoughts you want to share with us on that big bus reform piece, beyond just regulation, James?

So, just really briefly, our board—and our board is quite wide-ranging; it includes people who were very senior in Transport for London through to people who were very senior in industry—all believe that regulation is essential and that we can't run a network without some form of regulation. We think that integrated ticketing is going to be really important; integrated modal hubs—so, not a train station, but where you interchange sensibly—is going to be vital as part of this, and we are also working to trial a whole number of different ways to decarbonise the tailpipe of the bus network as well. For my money, that will be supercharged when you go to some form of concessional franchise model.

Excellent. Okay, thank you for that. And as Huw suggested, I'm sure we'll write to you to drill down on some of those points as well. Rhun.

Diolch yn fawr iawn. We're still in a fairly brave newish world of fully publicly run rail franchise in Wales. I'd just like to look at the changes that have happened because of that change of governance, specifically progress around delivery of the original franchise commitments, though it was a very different franchise at that point. What's your assessment of what has changed, the kinds of risks that are now becoming more apparent, or less so, if you like, because of that change of structure?

Okay. So, in terms of what we are doing, we want to bake-in all of the big things that we talked to people before about that were being done. So, the south-east Wales metro is being delivered as per original spec, the new rolling stock is all being delivered as per original specification, and stations across the network are all going to be improved.

I think the difference will be that we can be more, hopefully, socially—. We can adapt more to social requirements, rather than pure economic needs. We can evolve faster than a private sector contract would in terms of service offerings, so we shouldn't be locked into a service pattern for 10 years; we ought to be able to evolve it in, well, ideally, every year, but certainly in blocks of three years—

Can I just interrupt you there?

Yes, of course.

Those are principles that are very important to me, and I think I speak on behalf of at least some of the members of this committee too. Are you starting to see rock-solid examples of where you are able to do that and take decisions that would be different to those that would have been under the original franchise?

So, yes, lots of commercial decisions we are able to take a very different approach to them. I could write and outline some of these. We're also beginning to be able to have different conversations with people like Network Rail, and, say, rather than have a very adversarial approach, which was set up through privatisation, where one company, in essence, sues the other, we should stop doing all of that and put all of the money that is saved back into providing services for the customer.

The other area that I think you need to scrutinise us on, but I feel confident that we'll be able to give a good set of answers on, is, if you remember, in the franchise commitment, there was a statement that said, 'We will spend x million pounds on stations across Wales.' It never said what was going to be delivered for that x million pounds. And I always thought that was a strange thing to get excited about. It was a bit like going into B&Q and saying, 'I'm going to spend—insert the number—on my kitchen', but have no idea what you want to do with it. So, we are piloting by using the wider supply chains, including local authorities—and I'll give you two examples of this—getting something done for much less money and then either that money is available to go back into other parts of the public service or is able to be redeployed in further public transport. And the two examples I'll give are Queen Street—. So, we have tidied up Queen Street station. If you go and look at it now, you might think it needs a whole lot more further tidying up. But we tidied that up, and I think the total cost was maybe around £1 million, rather than the previous figure, which was looking like £4 million or £5 million, and we did it in a period of about four to five weeks, using local contractors, rather than three to four months. In west Wales—and Geoff will have to remind me of the station; it's the station we've just opened in west Wales, Geoff—we are working with a group of local authorities through the trunk road agents down there for them to do litter picking, gritting of the station, minor maintenance, rather than using the private sector, and the cost of—

Bow Street.

Bow Street station. Thank you, Geoff. And the cost of doing is significantly below the previous costs that we had. My ambition is that we do that type of thing, and more, right across the whole of the network.

So, it seems you're clear that—. You're confident that the commitments made under the original franchise on improving quality of services still stand.

Absolutely.

There's no question about that. Okay.

And just to build on that, there is—. We have already got a new grant agreement agreed with the Welsh Government. The reason I haven't led with that is, I think, in and of itself, having a grant agreement with another part of the public sector is an inefficiency that involves lots of lawyers and accountants, and we can move to an service-level agreement that is equally biting and, arguably, is more able to be scrutinised, because it'll be much clearer. But that can be made visible and we can write to you with all of that.

Yes. Okay. Maybe you can educate me here a bit. I was going to go on the question of a new service agreement that you said, I think in the economy committee in November 2020, would be put in place as a result of that change in ownership. Is the grant agreement that you're talking about—

That's it. Yes, that's it.

Okay. That's exactly what we're talking about. And again, key performance indicators, you suggested at that time, would have to be updated and changed to go alongside that. Where are we on that?

So, they are available. They're on our website. Again, I think, perhaps we ought to write to you and/or provide them in a better format on the website. I looked at them this morning. They are all there, they're completely accessible, but I think there's a slightly better way of presenting them so you can see historic data alongside current data. It includes all of the KPIs that we were originally going to measure Keolis with.

So, they're all in there. Are you suggesting that there are some additional ones as well?

Yes. We've evolved some of them. It includes what you would expect to see—service quality standards, on time across the whole network, capacity—but we've included things that are not a lot of good at the minute because of the impact of COVID figures. We've included cost per passenger, emissions per passenger and a whole series of targets. I can't remember them all. But the first thing we do in every rail board is to hold the managing director of the rail part of the business to account on those KPIs that you can see online.

Diolch yn fawr iawn.

I'm afraid we're going to have to move on. We'll come to Huw and then we'll come to Jenny. I know that Jenny has a couple of things that she wants to raise, but we might not be able to cover them all, so you'll have to prioritise, I think. Huw first and then Jenny.

Thanks, Chair. It's a really quick one, actually, James. Back in September last year, all the committee members here who are regular subscribers to the TransportXtra online magazine will have been reassured by your quotes within that magazine saying that the creation of Great British Railways, the Williams-Shapps plan, wouldn't actually deflect or detract from Welsh Government's ambitions to integrate transport, provide a common branding, and so on. Six months on from that, with time to look at it, time to reflect, are you still of the opinion that it's no danger to Wales? Is TfW involved in it in any way at all, and what is that involvement?

I still think I would make the statement that I don't think it's a danger to Wales in the sense of I don't think anyone is trying to take anything away from us. However, what we haven't seen through any of that is any moves towards further devolution, which, obviously, people have called for, particularly in terms of track devolution. And therefore, unless we can get any betterment in terms of how we work with GBR in comparison to how we worked with the Rail Delivery Group in the past, DfT and Network Rail, then some of the historic problems will remain baked in. And that includes things like there will be a charge levied on us to be part of the new GBR that won't necessarily be optional, and that's to cover things like ticketing at a UK level. But many of those ticketing platforms at a UK level don't do what we want to do. So, for me—and I'm starting a conversation. I've no idea how far we'll get with it—I think we want to be in a position, by and large, to be able to join in where it makes sense for Wales and play our part, but to tune out where it doesn't make sense. And my biggest fear, actually, is that what Wales needs is a fully integrated, joined-up, multimodal transport approach, but GBR is all about the railway. And if you look at the figures, the railway is in the margins.

Just one observation, Chair. The parallel discussion is that the UK have massive investment now in electrification to some of the major metropolitan areas and the north of England and so on; my God, we'd welcome some of that investment in Wales if it was devolved or otherwise. Anyway, it's just an observation.

Yes, absolutely. Okay. Thank you, Huw. Jenny.

Three quick questions, really. One is on the south-east Wales metro system. On the one hand, things are happening at pace—you know, not a million miles away from where I'm sitting, we've got dedicated cycle lanes going in to create the Cardiff to Newport cycle route, which is fantastic. But on the other hand, the bus station, oh my goodness, the Cardiff Central bus station, how many years has it been delayed? And how much of that is to do with other commercial pressures to keep commercial landlords happy and give priority to them, rather than the good folk of Cardiff, who desperately need their bus station back?

On the south-east Wales metro, I probably don't need to comment any more than to say that we are continuing to progress with it at pace, and again, we can provide an update in writing on that. COVID has impacted it marginally, but I think the team and the supply chain have done a really good job of keeping it on track, and I feel confident in saying that if we roll forward three years, we could still describe the impact of COVID as being marginal on that scheme. The impact of inflation is going to be felt a bit in the end price of it, but no more than it is in anything else.

In terms of the bus station, I think others are better qualified to comment on it than I am, but obviously Transport for Wales fit-out is only able to start once the rest of the building is completed, and the rest of the building was only able to be completed when planning and other negotiations had gone through. I think, so long as we can make the rest of the bus network in Cardiff work, then the bus interchange will be an improvement on what we had before, but I think everyone needs to recognise that it's a bus interchange, rather than a station. The number of stand-down points there, I think, Geoff, is 14 or 16, rather than 40 or 50, which we had before, which means that many of the stops will be distributed around the city. The job that Transport for Wales is doing at the minute is to try and make all of those stops feel like one integrated whole across Cardiff and not a group of people who are wandering around trying to work out how to use the bus network, because that's the last thing we want.

I think if you could just send us a written note on the progress in delivering the three metro systems, along with potential problems, and also where you're at with your costed five-year delivery plan with key milestones—if you could write to us about that.

I just wanted to ask you about governance in the metro, because that is starting to be discussed publicly. Clearly, in a place like south-east Wales, you've got the Cardiff capital region transport authority, as well as all the different local authorities who pipe up on this. How do you see the governance being clear to the public so that they have a sense of how they know where to go when they're not happy, or when they are happy?

I think there are three broad categories here. The first category is the core Valleys metro, which is the rail part, and that is something that people would need to come straight to Transport for Wales for. We are delivering that ourselves. Then, there is a group of aspirational enhancements to those core Valleys, so that would be things like—I don't know—the north-west corridor, the extension further down into Cardiff Bay, extensions into other Valleys communities. Once they have been agreed and funded—I think that is a Welsh Government, TfW, stakeholder, city region conversation—and they come into our programme, that would be, again, Transport for Wales to be held accountable. And then, you've got a bunch of add-ons that local authorities are responsible for, and that might be they're providing some car parking provision to enable more people to park to use one of our stations. I can understand absolutely the point you are making, and I agree with it—I guess what you've got is some political dialogue going on that says, 'What should the next priority be?' So long as it's clear that that is a political dialogue, and that once a decision is taken to build something the funding comes with it together with the responsibility to be held accountable for doing it, which to date has been the case, then I think that's okay. We may need to do more to communicate that to the public, though.

Okay. Thank you. Lastly, what's your timetable for integrated ticketing? Is it at all possible until we've got rail reregulation, and, if it isn't, how quickly can you do it after we've got the Acts in place?

I touched on that earlier, and I think I said I'd provide a note on it, but, in essence, there's a pilot this year running into next year for bus and rail, independent of each other, and then, next year, we're trying to bring those two together in south-east Wales as a pilot, initially focusing the bus integration piece with Newport and Cardiff Bus. With reregulation it would be easy to roll that out more widely. The technology is fine, it's the commercials that are difficult.

Okay. Thank you.

Great. We have run out of time. So, may I thank James and Geoff for the evidence that you have provided today? You will receive a copy of the transcript—a draft copy—so that you can check it. And along with the evidence that we gathered this morning in the very beneficial session that we had with stakeholders, this all sets a very strong foundation for us as a committee as we look at issues related to transport, and it will be an important theme for us throughout this Senedd term, and certainly today gives us a very strong foundation for moving that work forward. So, thank you very much, James and Geoff. You're welcome to leave the meeting now as we continue with our business.

And we will move now to item 5 on our agenda, papers to note, and there are a number of papers to note. You will see them in your papers from 5.1 to 5.8 on the agenda. Are Members happy to note those papers together? You are welcome to highlight anything. Everyone content to note? Excellent. We will note those papers.

Item 6 is a motion to move into private session, and I therefore propose, in accordance with Standing Order 17.42(vi) and (ix), that the committee resolves to meet in private for the remainder of the meeting. Are Members content? Yes, everyone is content. We will therefore move into private session, and the broadcast will come to an end. Thank you.