Decarbonising Rural Transport

Tim Farron Excerpts

Tuesday 7th March 2023 Westminster Hall

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing a really important debate. When it comes to decarbonising public transport, bus use is massively important in rural communities like hers and mine. I am sure she will agree with me that the Government’s £2 cap on bus fares is a positive thing and it is positive that it has been extended to June, but even more positive would be to extend it beyond that. But it is of no use whatever if someone lives in a community where there is no bus service. When I think about places in my own community such as the Cartmel peninsula and areas in Cumbria such as the Eden valley, there is a lack of options when it comes to bus services—far too few or none at all—so it would make sense to give local authorities like the new Westmorland and Furness Council the power to start and run their own bus services to fill in the gaps and people could spend their £2 on bus services that actually exist.

[Selaine Saxby]

I agree with the hon. Member. There is so much more that could be done. With so many of these rural transport issues, we need local solutions and for local communities to be able to share their best practice, because there are some great local bus solutions up and down the country. I have a remote district council that is detached from the county council, which is where highways sits. How do we join up those pieces? More could be done to come up with innovative solutions, which already exist in places, but are not universally available. Indeed, bus travel in my constituency is not universally available, let alone decarbonised, and that makes things as basic as getting to school both expensive and problematic.

Our bus company, which I recently met, notes that people are tending to make fewer trips than they did before the pandemic and also tending to make shorter and more local journeys as opposed to long-distance trips on a daily basis. Public transport providers have had to adapt to that, but our communities still rightfully expect the same connections to exist as they did before the pandemic, or even new connections to be developed as society has changed.

Broadly in my constituency the patronage has recovered to about 80% to 90% of pre-pandemic levels, but with concessionary journeys recovering only to around 70%. That recovery creates a challenge in rural settings where margins were stretched or non-existent before the pandemic. Funding needs to respect rurality and the higher costs of operating the routes. That could be done through paying bus service operator grants on a mile or kilometre basis as opposed to per litre of fuel to cover costs. I am assured that the industry wishes to engage with the Department on those points so that a longer-term settlement can be reached to support rural services on a longer-term basis as opposed to the current cycle of short-term funding that we are in, even though that funding is greatly appreciated.

The current Get Around for £2 is fabulous. In my constituency people can do a fantastic trip from Barnstaple to Lynton for just £2—a full 26 miles—or get to Exeter on the bus for £2. In normal times, to get from Ilfracombe, which has recently lost its last bank, to Barnstaple for the nearest branch, is two to three times more than the current £2 rate. We need to find a way to facilitate access to services for remote rural communities. In other communities, such as Woolacombe, employers provide buses for their teams to get to work, because there are no public transport options.

In the peak of the tourist season, overlaid with parking challenges and air pollution, huge queues of visitors and locals try to get to our beautiful beaches. Although the availability of public transport is my primary concern, decarbonisation of it is an entirely different matter, as rural bus journeys are significantly longer than urban ones. Capital investment in suitable vehicles is by definition going to be higher in rural Britain.

I recently spoke here about introducing a rail link from Barnstaple to Bideford. We also unsuccessfully submitted an inquiry into putting in a light rail link from Braunton to Barnstaple. Time and again, those projects do not progress; one cannot help but think that our rurality and population sparsity are factors. I hope that the Department for Transport will continue its positive work in active travel, with the latest round of funding of £200 million including rurality as a factor for the first time.

The previous cycling Minister visited north Devon’s iconic Tarka trail. Completing a stretch of that trail would see the north and south coasts of Devon fully connected. The project was ranked second out of six submitted by Devon County Council. The council team met the Minister to explain their frustration at having the five Exeter-based projects succeed, yet the second highest priority project rejected. I am delighted that rurality is now being considered following the Minister’s visit, and that the Tarka trail project is now being resubmitted. I hope that Active Travel England and the Department will look favourably upon it, and take further steps to enable more active travel solutions come to fruition in rural Britain.

Large counties such as Devon, with big urban centres and an enormous rural hinterland, need different approaches for those two elements. As a community, we would benefit hugely from electric bikes, which can undertake longer, hillier journeys and enable people who may not be able to cycle so far on a traditional bike to do so. Again, electric bike hire facilities are available at transport hubs in Exeter but not Barnstaple.

To begin to decarbonise our transport network, we need to look to transport hubs, where active travel can potentially be the first or last mile. To do that, our buses and trains should be better at taking bikes, hubs should have better bike storage and there should be electric vehicle chargers, if travellers are connecting to buses or trains, alongside public toilets.

[Tim Farron]

I am taking advantage of the hon. Lady’s generosity, for which I am grateful. I am in full agreement with what she says about transport hubs, where there can be electric bikes, non-electric bikes, and bus and rail interchanges. In our community, we have several railway lines: Settle to Carlisle, the Furness line, the Lakes line and the main line. My great concern is that we stand to lose railway station ticket offices at Grange, Appleby and Windermere. Would those not be great places to have hubs? Is that not a good argument to ensure we maintain fully-staffed railway stations in rural communities?

[Selaine Saxby]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. It is important to look at rurality in how we deal with all infrastructure developments. I know that my own ticket office in Barnstaple has concerns. I have only one trainline, so his constituency is particularly well connected. We need to recognise that, where there is a sparse population, ticket offices are working less than in a busy town centre. We need to be more innovative in our approach, to ensure that residents who do not use trains so often can comfortably use the train station and transport hubs.

I was coming on to say that facilities such as public toilets are a vital part of transport hubs. Barnstaple’s bus station toilets have not reopened since March 2020. If we are serious about encouraging public transport usage and decarbonising our transport, we need to recognise that longer journeys, with longer waits between buses and trains, require these additional facilities to be present, particularly for our older residents. The lack of hubs that are safe, warm and have the right facilities makes using public transport far harder in locations such as North Devon at this time.

Far too many routes in rural Britain are single-carriageway, 60-mile-an-hour roads. If we are to tackle that head-on, to facilitate safer cycling and walking on those roads, we need additional paths to be constructed to facilitate things such as safe school journeys on foot or bike. Although today’s debate focuses on decarbonisation, we could also consider the health benefits of an active travel mode to work or school, which often seem to be somewhat neglected.

I recognise that, as was mentioned earlier, there are examples across the UK of great rural transport schemes. However, as with so many matters around rurality, as discussed in the debate that I led on levelling up rural Britain, it is harder for these examples of best practice to be shared between councils and communities. I hope that as we move towards decarbonising our transportation, more support is given to overstretched councils to share best practice and roll out solutions to rural as well as urban Britain and find funding solutions that give councils the ability to deliver a decarbonisation plan that reflects rurality, alongside an acceptance that the costs per capita will differ. In areas reliant on their tourists, the population swells enormously in the summer, which, again, is rarely reflected in funding settlements or even the calculation of carbon pollution.

Rural Britain deserves to see its transport decarbonised. Our productivity is reduced because of the poor transport links. I hope that my right hon. Friend the Minister has plans in his Department to ensure that rurality is rapidly included in future funding announcements and that there are long-term settlements lying ahead—it was so warmly welcomed to have rurality mentioned in the current round of active travel funding—because we all want to level up and decarbonise transport in rural Britain.