£3bn needed to fund green transport: Translink

THE CEO of Translink warned that £3bn investment will be needed over the next 10 years to shift to greener public transport as the firm revealed a £1.1m pro-forma pre-tax profit for the latest financial year.

Pro-forma earnings is profit before tax and technical accounting adjustments.

The public transport company also reported annual revenues of £238.5m, up 8.2% from the previous year.

Translink attributed the success to the 84.5m passenger journeys, the highest in 20 years, which raised £196m.

The annual report also said that a focus on cost reduction and improving business efficiencies led to a saving of £12m per year.

Translink CEO Chris Conway noted that funding for public transport is still around 50% less here than in other parts of the UK and spoke of the need for an Executive in Stormont.

“With our own resources we can do things that will still make progress but not as much as we feel we need to make,” he said.

“Up until now we’ve been able to progress most of the projects we’ve needed to. A lot of the decisions had been made under the previous Executive.

“When I talk about the policy shift for what we need to do for climate change that’s where the Department for Infrastructure requirement would be, with £3bn needed over the next 10 years.

“The Department would be open in saying they need a minister to help make those big policy and expenditure changes focusing more on public and sustainable transport.”