Free public transport for all Scots is nothing but a pipe dream at the moment

It seems likely that the Holyrood government will seek to increase the qualifying age for concessionary travel in next February’ s budget. That is no reason to completely dismiss Stuart C raw ford’ s thoughts on extending the existing system to all age groups at a cost he estimated to be well over £ 700 million ( Perspective, 25 October). Notably, he failed to look at the chance of extending the scheme to that part of the rail network which is underused and might bene - fit some of those groups. His analysis, however, can be criticised on grounds that go further than the negative ones he thinks exist in the inner echelons of the Administration. It is too simplistic to assume that the cost can easily be jus- tified, in part, by a reduction in the number of road accidents a shift to public transport use might cause. The introduction of tolls on bridges, road pricing and congestion charging are fraught with problems too, both administrative and political. Even if people started to use buses more there is still the question of the condition of many roads, and the time it might take to encourage the switch to public transport. Public policy, particularly economic and project planning, always has to take time lags into account. It is simply impossible to get that link between increased bus use and road accident reduction in one time frame. The whole plan would need years of road improvement projects before it would become credible. Equally, congestion charging should not be introduced as a means of raising revenue. It is essentially a traffic management measure, as former London mayor Ken Livingstone pointed out. The success, however temporary, of his scheme introduced in the early Noughties was based on that main principle. No responsible pub- lic body should seek to finance other projects or services on the anticipated revenue from a congestion charge. Mr Crawford has triggered an interesting debate about how we can all get around but he will need to provide a bit more information before his remarks can be taken seriously.