Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): We welcome to the Committee Sian Kerr, director of transport planning and modelling — it is good to see you, Sian; James Redmond, head of transport planning and modelling; and Andrew McGreevy from the transport planning and modelling unit.

As usual, members, I seek agreement that the evidence session be reported by Hansard. Are members agreed?

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): Thank you for coming to the Committee. Obviously, this is a big topic, particularly given the fact that we are looking at climate change and those obligations on the Department. We have read the draft report. If you do not mind, please take five minutes to brief the Committee, and then I will come to members' question.

Ms Sian Kerr (Department for Infrastructure): Good morning, Chair and members. Thank you for the opportunity to brief the Committee on the transport strategy. As the Chair said, I am Sian Kerr, and with me are my colleagues James and Andrew. Members will have received a copy of the draft transport strategy. If it pleases the Committee, I will provide some background information to set the context.

The Department's last overarching transport strategy was published in 2002 and is now considerably outdated. Since then, the Department's policy position on a number of areas has been updated through various strategies and policy documents. That has led to key policy messages being spread across various publications.

Consequently, it can be challenging for our stakeholders to access and understand our overarching ambitions for a sustainable transport network that provides healthier and better connected communities. Additionally, the transport sector and wider society have undergone significant changes in that time, most notably with the recognition of the climate emergency and the Executive's commitments in the Climate Change Act 2022, which have altered the context in which we must plan for and deliver transport here.

That brings me to the reason why we are here today — a new draft transport strategy. The strategy will set out a new vision and strategic priorities for the transport system through to 2035. It will articulate transport's role as a social, economic and environmental enabler, and it will establish a set of transport priorities for the Department to deliver against. In several areas, that strategy introduces new messaging or significantly updates a previous policy position. Examples of that include reducing the carbon impact of transport or the vision-and-validate approach to transport planning. In other areas, the draft strategy consolidates and draws upon existing policies and strategies. For instance, the road safety content is primarily drawn from the road safety strategy for NI to 2030, and that strategy will continue to provide detailed policy messaging for road safety issues. The transport strategy has an important role to play in the preparation of the new suite of transport plans by providing an overarching strategic context, consistency and rationale for transport decisions. Working with local stakeholders, the transport plans will translate that into local measures and actions.

We have engaged with key stakeholders in the preparation of the new strategy, including the Inclusive Mobility and Transport Advisory Committee (IMTAC) and the Consumer Council. Additionally, the preparation of the transport strategy by the transport planning and modelling unit has allowed us to utilise the views of local communities and organisations, which we sought as part of the extensive engagement in preparation of the transport plans. That engagement has included local authorities, community groups, community transport, the environmental non-governmental organisations (NGOs), young people, university students and transport providers. Our colleagues and their policy teams that have ownership of specific issues, such as community transport, regularly engage with their respective stakeholders. The insight from that engagement has been carried back through interdepartmental collaboration as we have been preparing the draft strategy.

As I outlined, this is a draft strategy for consultation. The draft strategy covers many important issues that affect people's lives. The purpose of the consultation is to generate debate on the issues and to improve our strategy and, ultimately, the transport network. The Department aims to launch the public consultation on the strategy in late May, and we look forward to listening to stakeholders' views on the future potential of transport. We are also planning to meet the Community Transport Association (CTA) later this month with our public transport colleagues to outline the draft strategy and our plans for public consultation. That concludes my remarks.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): Super. Thank you very much. I always like it when people stay within the five minutes, so well done, Sian. Strategic priority 1 is that transport be "Resilient and Sustainable". One of the hot topics concerns how we can create that modal shift and get people to change their behaviour. The draft report talks about "Travel Demand Management". Point 51 reads:

When do you hope to have that part of it fully developed, and what measures are you looking at that may be on the table to create that modal shift?

Ms Kerr: It is fair to say that our first priorities have been to do the transport strategy and then to do the climate work to input into the climate action plan. We are starting to look at that area in the framework, but it is fair to say that measures to look at how we best utilise the capacity that we have in the road network have already been considered and linked into the likes of the transport plans.

James, do you want to say a bit more about some of the practical examples and the range of things that demand management might cover?

Mr James Redmond (Department for Infrastructure): With demand management, there is a three-pronged attack, so there is not a one-size-fits-all approach or one package of measures. There are three headline titles in the creation of capacity. When we are talking about the creation of capacity, we are looking at the reallocation of road space. There is also a network management aspect to that in how we can use technology better to inform it, such as with ticketing. Those aspects all come under that demand management framework, and you also have behavioural change.

You then have a three-pronged attack with a wide range of options under each prong. The demand management framework will be developed to be scalable depending on location. Belfast is obviously different from rural areas such as Fermanagh and Omagh, so it is about understanding the needs of each area and looking at a suite of measures to influence travel, be they to promote modal shift by providing alternative modes of transport or to make long-stay car parking less attractive while ensuring that the need for short-term parking in other areas is accounted for. It is about that three-pronged attack: network capacity; management of the network with technology and ticketing; and the behavioural change that comes from our influencing and changing the mindset that the car needs to be the main mode of choice for all our journeys.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): I suppose that I am getting at the fact that some of those policies may be the most controversial. How will the community engagement piece happen? The strategy's 2035 date gives quite a short time to ensure that resource is put into that community engagement work and that people know what is happening, particularly when you look at the movement of road space and see what that means for people.

Mr Andrew McGreevy (Department for Infrastructure): If I may, I will provide an example from your constituency. We are working on the Fermanagh and Omagh transport plan. As part of that, we are looking at measures that fall under demand management. We do not need to reach for headline-grabbing measures such as road tolling. We can look at simpler measures such as bus priority and think about how they link into other developments in Fermanagh and Omagh, such as the Strule campus. It is about looking at how to use bus priority on the route to that school to give priority to public transport and encourage more students to use public transport services to get there. It is also about linking that with improving public transport provision in smaller rural settings through rural mobility hubs so that people are encouraged to use public transport from rural areas into the town and then to the school.

It is about large and small measures. We have engaged from the start of the transport plan process. We are engaging with members of the council and will engage again with key stakeholders, particularly the voluntary and community sector, before we go to public consultation. We will then have our public consultation process. We should never underestimate the importance of that process as the main driver for getting comments back to us. As we work through the processes, if we look at big measures, we will find that there will be lots of engagement to get lots of opinion, but, on smaller measures, we can also work on the ground with the people who are affected. I hope that that makes sense.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): I have a controversial question. I come from a rural constituency, and I will touch on that again. We have the vehicle emissions trading scheme (VETS) in Northern Ireland, and charging infrastructure will be very important in enabling people to make the switch to electric vehicles (EVs). In urban areas, there is more opportunity to use public transport and to have active travel and all that. How do you disincentivise people in urban areas so that they will switch to an electric vehicle? As part of that, how do you make sure that rural areas have an increase in the number of points in their charging network? I looked at the figures and saw that the charging infrastructure in Fermanagh and Omagh is poor; we have to play catch-up.

Ms Kerr: That is probably worth separating into two different issues. The need to decarbonise under our legal duty is one issue, and the congestion in our urban areas is another. If we think of those as two different problems to be solved, we find that the solutions for each look slightly different. When we look at decarbonising transport, we see that the answer is predominantly in decarbonising cars and the switchover to electric vehicles. When we talk about demand management, we find that we are probably more in the space of addressing congestion by encouraging people to use modes that better utilise road space. One bus will take up roughly the space of four or five cars, but there will be 80 people on it. That is where, in urban areas, demand management comes into play, because we want to prioritise and use some road space for the likes of bus priority, and we want to bring in more active travel.

Unfortunately, only limited road space is available. We cannot keep widening roads. Congestion is clearly a more predominant issue in our urban cities and towns. We do not want a scenario in which we have focused on EV cars and everyone drives an EV but the congestion is just as bad or worse in our urban centres. That is not where we want to get to, but we fully understand and recognise that public transport options are not available in our rural areas. We recognise that the car is very much here to stay and that it will contribute to journeys. We can then look at the EV transition.

We will be before the Committee in a few weeks. The issues with public charging are slightly different in our rural areas, because most people have access to a driveway and will choose to rely on home charging. In urban areas, where we tend to have more terraced housing, less road space and less off-road parking, home charging is a wider issue.

Hopefully, that addresses your question. Yes, it is potentially controversial, but, as Andrew said, all our work involves a lot of engagement and consultation. None of this will happen overnight, and there will not be a blanket approach.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): That brings me on to the second priority, which is "Connected and Inclusive Communities" and how we improve the public transport that is available in rural areas. It will come as no surprise to you to hear that I am frustrated with the fact that the all-island strategic rail review does not include Fermanagh. My concern is that the document will last until 2035, which means that transport in Fermanagh will not be reviewed for 10 years. I want to ensure that we have it in writing that the document will definitely be reviewed and that Fermanagh could be included. We do not want to see communities being left behind in any of the documents. While I understand that everything is a chicken-and-egg situation, it is important that we focus on rural areas so that we can see, when we go to look at the overall picture, that they are not left behind. Could that review be included in the final document? You are looking at the transport plans for Fermanagh and Omagh.

Mr McGreevy: The same team that produced the transport plan is producing the strategy, and that has provided a great opportunity for us to look at the strategy through the lens of the views of local stakeholders in places like Fermanagh and Omagh. We have heard first-hand accounts of the public transport challenges that people have in rural areas. We have taken those views and have, hopefully, reflected them up into the strategy through our work on the transport plan. It is a strategy, so it is at a higher level, but we have made sure that the views are built into the strategy in order to allow it to flow back down and provide the context for our transport plans when we publish. It is an overarching strategy; it is not about getting into the details of the strategic all-Ireland rail review.

However, we pick up on the fact that, in the areas that the rail review does not cover, there is the opportunity to provide bus connections to link into the developments on the rail network. We are picking up on that in the Fermanagh and Omagh transport plan. It is very much in our focus as we look at the local measures. The timing is off, because the strategy and plan are happening at the same time. Ideally, we would have the strategy first, but it has provided an opportunity for us to take the insight and listen to the concerns about rural connectivity. We are building those concerns into the local transport plan.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): I get that there are bus connections, but does that not mean that we are accepting failure? Are we saying that it is OK for that county to be left without rail? To be fair, rail is probably one of the most decarbonised modes of public transport. Are we saying that there will be only buses for the next 10 years until the next review?

Mr McGreevy: It is about where the strategies sit. We are not here to cover the detailed policy area of rail. That concerns public transport policy and public transport operations; however, that is not to shirk our responsibility as transport planners for that area. It is about understanding that the strategy itself sets out the detailed work that has happened in that area and the fact that a decision was made to publish that document. The transport strategy is not revisiting that, but it reflects the commitments that the Minister has made in that area. I hope that we have captured those, including how we address connectivity in the places that the strategic all-island rail review does not cover. It is in the strategy, and that sets the direction for our transport plans.

Mr Redmond: The purpose of the strategy and the reference in it to the all-island strategic rail review are to set the context of where we are with rail. The all-island rail review essentially takes us out to 2050. It outlines short-, medium- and long-term rail infrastructure projects over that time. None of those schemes is shovel-ready, and a lot of work is still to be undertaken. When you look at the timeline for our transport plans to 2035, you see that it is related to population and employment growth. There are review and monitoring mechanisms in those plans that we will revisit to understand where we are at a certain time and where we are with the climate aspect and what the needs are there. As Andrew alluded to about the transport element, the current short-term measure is the bus. That is the workhorse that moves people around. To answer your question, Chair, the all-island rail review takes us to 2050, but there is nothing to say that we will not revisit it to see what rail looks like in five or 10 years' time and at whether the picture changes.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): Did you say that you were meeting the Community Transport Association next month?

Mr McGreevy: At the end of this month.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): In conversations that I have had with my local community transport association, it said that it felt that it was not involved in the development of the transport strategy. Is that a fair assumption for the community transport associations to make?

Ms Kerr: We recognise that the associations feel that way, which is why I joined that meeting to talk to them about the transport strategy. As I think that I said in my opening remarks, we work with various parts of the Department that engage regularly with the sector and feed that information back. Hopefully, you will see in the strategy some content from the community transport sector that will address its concerns. The strategy is going out for public consultation, and, obviously, we are very happy to receive any comments. We recognise the role that community transport plays.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): Can you touch on the level of engagement that there was with Translink in developing the transport strategy before the draft was produced?

Ms Kerr: We engage with Translink regularly in many aspects of our work. Translink is involved in the development of some local transport plans as well. We engaged regularly during the process, and Translink will get a copy of the strategy before it goes out.

Mr Redmond: You are probably aware, Chair, that a number of reviews are ongoing between the Department and Translink. We have kept it at a high level and pointed to the fact that those reviews are ongoing. The outcomes of the reviews are unknown, but we engage continually with Translink and other providers to set the scene for the direction in which we want to go.

Mr McGreevy: I can go back to the point that was made at the start of the meeting about our team having pulled together a strategy from across the Department. The body of work on community transport is being done in the phase 1 and phase 2 reviews. It is not for the strategy to step past that work or to try to take it on. Those teams are continuing with it. There was a lot of engagement when it was being done, and that was pulled into the strategy. We had a lot of really insightful engagement with community transport providers in County Fermanagh and in Omagh, which had done a lot of work on rural transport poverty.

We are aware of that work because our team is working on the plans and the strategy. Even though we have not engaged with Fermanagh Community Transport directly on the draft strategy, we feel as though we have, through our community transport teams and our work on the transport plans, an understanding of the issues and the policy area. Importantly, we are going out to public consultation. We do not diminish the role of a public consultation in the process of producing a policy or strategy.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): It is encouraging to hear that you have taken on board the concerns about transport poverty. A huge amount of work has been done locally in that regard, so I am glad.

The strategy will look at our climate change targets. How likely is it that the 2030 greenhouse gas emissions target, as set out in the Climate Change Act 2022, will be met? Moreover, is it envisaged that the Department will be on track to meet the 2040 target by 2035? That is quite a target to meet.

Ms Kerr: The important thing to say is that the 2030, 2040 and 2050 targets are collective targets for all Northern Ireland emissions, not for each sector's emissions. We have provided, as part of the DAERA-led process on the climate action plan, the quantification for transport, how we see transport decarbonising and the rate at which it will decarbonise. We fed that into the development of the document. We are the second-biggest sector at the minute, so we clearly have a key role to play. The legal target for when transport will largely be decarbonised is 2050, and that has to be the case if, collectively, we are to meet our wider targets. We are happy to provide you with much more information on that. I think that we have another evidence session with the Committee in a couple of weeks' time.

Mr Boylan: Thank you very much for your presentation. This is a big challenge for us all. I know that you are going out to consultation. How is the strategy going to address the issues for rural people in general? You may not have engaged with outside bodies, but you do recognise from your own policies and reports from different sections of the Department that other Departments have a big part to play. Councils also have a big part to play, as will the likes of the taxi industry. I take it that your departmental officials are dealing with all those sectors in order to develop the strategy.

We know that 70% of people use cars. We know that a lot of those cars come down the motorway. There are stats, and that is fine. I am not arguing with them. Have we clearly identified the shorter journeys for which we should encourage people to use public transport? That is a big challenge. If you are talking about a 5-mile radius — greater Belfast or wherever — it is easier to incentivise those people to use public transport. Rural people have a serious reliance on single car use. If we are serious about the strategy, there is no point in arguing over that point for the next 10 years. That is the message to send as part of the consultation. That is the broader conversation that the draft strategy should draw out.

Ms Kerr: It will come as no surprise to you that our Minister is very clear about the role that the Department needs to play in achieving regional balance and about the difference between the challenges that our urban and rural areas face. That has therefore been very much in our thinking. I said earlier that we recognise that the opportunity to get people to switch from their car to using other modes of transport is probably greater in urban areas. We have made it very clear that there is a role for decarbonised cars in the future.

Mr Boylan: I am not even arguing about that. That is to do with climate change. It is part of the draft strategy.

Ms Kerr: Absolutely. James may wish to come in, but we recognise that a huge number of very short journeys that are made are prime examples of where somebody could shift to using a different mode of transport. You will see from the Consumer Council feedback in figure 9 of the draft strategy that people consider a lot of the journeys to be quite complex. On a relatively short journey, they could be doing the shopping, picking up the kids and going to work. It is about how we make those sorts of journeys able to be made more easily using public transport.

Mr Redmond: What we are trying to do through the transport strategy is to provide those policy hooks that relate to the "why" and the "what". In the transport plan, we have a level of detail about what that looks like in the context of the locality, be it Belfast, Fermanagh, Newry or Derry/Londonderry. Each will have its own case for change or need for transformation. There will be scalable levels for how we influence that level of travel based on our objectives.

The previous transport strategy was published in 2002. There has been the absence of one document that points in that direction and gives us the rationale for the "why" and the "what" behind what we are trying to do so that, when we talk about councils and the Department, everybody is following the same direction of travel and has a consistent understanding of why we are doing it. For some, that may be difficult, but there is an understanding of why we want to do it and what the vision for doing so is.

Mr Boylan: I appreciate that. The strategy has to provide the right direction in order to get the right answers so that it can then be reformulated after the consultation. Sorry, do you want to come in?

Mr McGreevy: An important thread running through the strategy is partnership. It runs right through demand management and those shorter journeys. As a Department, we have some of the levers to enable us to create change in that area. We can look at public transport services. It is important, however, to recognise that other partners have large levers in the same area. Councils in particular have a lot of sway. The strategy outlines the partnership working that will be involved. A lot of that comes through in the transport plan process. Councils have put a lot of effort into creating their local development plans and community plans and into setting out a vision for their area. We can look at those documents and see how they envision the switch to more sustainable modes of travel happening. There is also the recognition that, although we have some levers, they too have levers in areas such as off-street car parking. It is through that partnership working that we will see real change, because, as public authorities, we cannot do it all ourselves. It is council-owned land. We need the public to be involved as well. The Department certainly cannot do it alone. Partnership working is central to the strategy. We hope that that comes through in the draft strategy.

Mr Boylan: I hope so. That is what I am getting at. Plenty of partners have a role to play. You mentioned the area plans and everything else. Hopefully, within the next 10 years, most of them will be playing a key role.

I have a final point to raise. The Chair raised it when she mentioned community transport. We have talked to community transport providers. We know the journeys that they make and the support that they provide. There are journeys made for health reasons and journeys made for education reasons. We need to have a collective conversation about all of that, and now is the time. I understand that you may not have engaged with all the providers, but we already know the issues. We have been talking for 20 years or more about congestion and everything else. Those are the kinds of things that, from reading the draft strategy, I hope will come out so that we get right and proper answers from the consultation. That is the key element for me. I presume that you have had all those conversations, because community transport in particular has played a big role. The journeys that those providers are making could be somebody else's responsibility, to be honest, but that has to be the direction of travel, if you will pardon the pun.

Mr McMurray: I have a quick question, Chair, which may be of relevance to you as well, given the meeting that we were at last night. The Department has referred to young people in the draft strategy. Young people are among those who may be precluded from using private transport. I am thinking of the age group up to 25 years old, not just children. How have those young people's considerations been taken into account? How do you envisage taking that further, given that they are a fairly big cohort?

Ms Kerr: Andrew will come in on that.

Mr McGreevy: Again, that is done through the transport plan process. We are talking a lot about plans and our strategy, but that is our joint work. As we were developing our transport plans, we went into primary schools and secondary schools to try to inform pupils about sustainable transport and also to talk about the issues in the towns for which we are producing transport plans. So far, we have a mix of primary-school and secondary-school demographics, including schools that use selection and schools that do not use selection, in order to hear a wide range of views.

The Department also held a session at Queen's University to talk about transport issues. That is how we have tried to hear views. The sessions that we held have been telling. We asked pupils in lower sixth in an unnamed grammar school, "When you were in third year, who got the bus to school?", and I would say that four fifths of the hands went up. We then asked, "Who now takes a private car to school?", and —

Mr McMurray: I can imagine.

Mr McGreevy: — a sizeable proportion of those hands did not go down.

As we are developing our transport plan and looking at the strategy, we have to be aware that, for those people, it is more convenient for them to take a car, so how do we improve sustainable modes of travel? That is a consideration. There are no easy answers, but it is a consideration. Again, it is in the transport plans, and, because we are looking through that lens, we hope that, at a strategic level, that comes through in the draft transport strategy. It is a very important cohort that we have considered, however, and engaging with those people is an enjoyable part of the consultation process, because we never know what feedback we will get.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): You never know what feedback you will get from the Committee either. [Laughter.]

Mr Boylan: You may go away and redesign the strategy.

Mr Redmond: I have a further point to make about shaping the strategy and even the plans. My colleagues and I went into the local universities. As Andrew said, we went into Queen's, but we also went out to Jordanstown. We talked with planning students, because they will be the practitioners of the future. The message was, "We are developing this strategy", because a lot of those guys will come out of university and be using the strategy or influencing it. We therefore had quite a lot of heavy engagement with them in the run-up to the strategy, and we have also programmed that targeted engagement into the consultation itself in order to draw out further ideas and understanding. Not everybody's travel is the same, so we have to understand why the youth of today want to go back to making complex journeys. We have tried to encompass that in the strategy, and we will continue to do so.

Mr McMurray: I have a very brief point to make about that. The answer to the question about car use — that whole segue — is telling. Those young people were asked that question in a formal education setting, if I may use that parlance. There is also informal education and the youth sector to consider, however. I am just saying that it may be worth broadening the cohort. Perhaps you have already done that. I do not know.

Mr McGreevy: As we have moved around, we have been finding our feet in our engagement with young people and looking at the principles for engaging with them so that that engagement is meaningful, rather than have us just talk at them. Through the process, we are building momentum as we try to get their views. We have a snapshot of views from those primary- and secondary-school pupils, and it is now about how we expand the cohort. As with all things, we have to explore whether doing so is possible. We are now even thinking about whether we can go into special schools and work with the staff there. We have to think about how can we run a session in a special school and get views from there, including those of parents of special-school pupils. There are also other youth sectors to consider, such as Girlguiding and the Scout Association. Those are options for us. We are moving in that direction to see how we can broaden the cohort.

Mr McMurray: Thank you very much. You mentioned the three-pronged approach: another Department for Infrastructure three-pronged approach. [Laughter.]

Ms Kerr: It is always in threes.

Mr McMurray: You love a three-pronged approach.

Ms Kerr: You can have four.

Mr Boylan: No more than three.

Mr McMurray: I have in my notes references to creation of capacity, technology and behavioural shifts. Which one of those poses the biggest challenge? There is low-hanging fruit per se, but there are also areas in which a real difference can be made. On behavioural shifts, you just mentioned an unnamed school to which everyone drives. I am curious to know what the biggest challenge is and what the biggest opportunity is?

Mr Redmond: I do not think that any one bumps down any other one, because they all come with their own challenges, particularly given what you are trying to do in localities. Achieving behavioural change — changing mindsets — is very challenging, but we have a responsibility to ensure that one does not come without the others. The question is this: how do we change people's mindset and ensure that they use attractive and accessible transport? That requires the creation of capacity in order to shift people on to other modes of transport, bearing in mind that we have finite road space. How do we best move people along by better utilising that? Having greater bus priority and more routes would create a mindset and bring about behavioural change to help people get on the bus to make a certain journey.

As for the technology aspect of network management, we all know how fast-moving technology is these days. The challenge comes from the risk of putting all our eggs in one basket and going with a certain technology that very soon becomes outdated. Looking to the future, we talk, for example, about autonomy, different ways of ticketing and different ways of managing parking. All come with the same challenge, so what we call a "three-pronged attack" is about their happening at almost the same time because they all complement one another. We need to recognise that and make sure that that comes through in the strategy.

Mr McMurray: Finally, I have what is more of a comment about how the rural aspect and connection to services are included in the strategy. I should declare an interest as someone whose wife does not drive. Public transport is so important. Only this week, we have been having issues getting connected to services, and that has a knock-on effect. If connections are better, people will use public transport.

Ms Kerr: That is a really important point. We talk about car use as though everybody has a car. Large numbers of families do not have any access to a car. We are very mindful of that and of the different challenges that people face in rural and urban areas. It is very much not a case of our taking a one-size-fits-all approach to the strategy, unfortunately. Rather, it is being done very much on a spatial basis.

Mr Redmond: Even on that point, looking at the evidence and data in the plans in order to understand who the users are and the demographics is important, and that has helped shape the plans, projects and measures that come forward. The strategy is still quite a high-level one and points to such aspects. The transport plans themselves will attempt to deal with movement of people, taking into account demographics, any disabilities and whether they have access to a car.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): We are going to move on.

Mr Dunne: Thanks, folks, for the presentation and for the work that you have done. I will scope out the significant costs involved in delivering the strategy at a UK level and, importantly, across Northern Ireland. What level of detail have you gone into to scope out the projected costs?

Ms Kerr: It is important to view it in the space of that high-level policy and all areas that flow from it, such as the all-island strategic rail review and the community transport review, which are the bits that will be costed. Given that this is a high-level approach, many places just replicate the likes of the road safety strategy, so we will not see everything packaged together to give an overall cost for the strategy. Rather, we will cost specific measures and actions. That does not really answer your question, but it does explain from where we are coming.

Mr Dunne: We are all aware that there are significant fiscal pressures in the Department and across all our Departments, so it is an important issue.

The strategy talks about alternative funding opportunities. What might those look like?

Ms Kerr: As a Department, we are always looking at options that might be available. We are very mindful of opportunities that might be available through the likes of the Shared Island Fund and Belfast port. We are also looking at doing some work with the Department of Transport in the Republic of Ireland on hydrogen. That is one example. We also link some of those areas to the likes of the Department for Transport in England to see what funding is available from there. You will be aware of the availability of grants for EVs, about which colleagues have spoken before. We are therefore very much in the space of working with stakeholders and colleagues to ascertain from where we can access funding, as well as making the case through the normal budgetary process by way of submitting bids.

Mr Dunne: I appreciate that. Congestion charges are mentioned in the draft strategy. There is some concern about them. We know from feedback that 70% of business owners are concerned. Is that correct?

Ms Kerr: I think that that came through in the Consumer Council survey findings, and it was a general reflection of people's views on supporting such charges. It is clear at the minute that we are not in the space of identifying any specific area in which we would be looking to introduce congestion charges. It was an in-theory comment. Congestion charging is one way in which other places, such as Glasgow and London, have looked to manage traffic. It would not be introduced as a means of revenue raising. Rather, it is about managing people's behaviours. The usual sources of money into the Department, such as money from parking charges and penalty charge notices (PCNs), result from managing and paying for a service. It is not about bringing in money to do other things.

Mr McGreevy: Road user charging is not something new in the draft strategy. It has been included in departmental policies and strategies for some time. It is a measure that is on the books and can be looked at if the evidence, the transport modelling and transport plan process tell us that there is a benefit from or a need for it. We have carried over the context for road user charging into the draft strategy, so we can draw on that. It is therefore not a new measure. It has been in departmental policies for some time, but just as an option.

The draft strategy points out that there is a very challenging budgetary position at the minute, and that is likely to be the case for some time. The draft strategy is realistic, but, in drafting the strategy and preparing the transport plans with our colleagues, we did not want to let that budgetary position dampen optimism. It is important that we create an optimistic vision of what is possible for transport and that the transport strategy and the transport plans present a range of options and measures that can be drawn from when funding or opportunities become available. It is therefore important not to dampen optimism. Sorry, "aspiration" would be a better word.

Mr Dunne: Thanks for that. Finally, where are we at with our EV network? In my area, there is a significant increase in the number of EVs. When I am out on the streets in my area, I hear, or do not hear, so many EV vehicles nowadays. How does the increase in the number of EVs fit into the draft strategy when you are considering infrastructure?

Ms Kerr: I do not have the figures with me today, but I will bring them to the next briefing. Where are we at? Since the Electricity Supply Board (ESB) started charging for electricity from its charge points, we have seen significant growth in the market. That seems set to continue. We get the figures from DFI Planning, so we see a pipeline of charge points coming on board. There have recently been a couple of announcements about large charging hubs, which is great. My colleague David Strain, who has attended the Committee previously, is working very closely with providers to ensure that we can smooth out the process of educating people about how to apply and what they need to do, and that wok continues. Generally speaking, we are pleased. It is really positive to see the increase in the number of rapid chargers. That has been great. Is there room for more? Of course. We are also seeing a change in how charging is working. For example, rather than hotels installing charge points, they are perhaps making spaces available for charge point operators to lease. It is an evolving space, and we have to keep up to speed with how that market is working.

Mr Dunne: Yes, and, as you mentioned, the technology is always evolving. It will have changed in five, 10 or 15 years. Thanks for that.

Mr Durkan: Thanks to the team for coming along to present on this hugely important, ambitious and certainly not easy piece of work. I admire your optimism, or aspiration, but it must be made more difficult for you when the elephant in the room is from where the investment is going to come. Taking on board some of the issues that have been raised previously about electric vehicles, I believe that we are not going to change. Everyone who has a petrol or diesel car today is not going to have an electric vehicle in 10 years' time. Never mind the network's capacity to deal with EVs, an EV is just not affordable for many people, so, in order to effect that change, the major focus has to be on making public transport more accessible, more convenient and more affordable for people. There is a carrot-and-stick approach to doing that. We hear suggestions about introducing congestion charges or charges for road use, but I am much more of a carrot man. I want to see more investment in public transport in order to make it more affordable for people and to establish where routes can be added to maximise their impact on reducing the carbon footprint, improving convenience for people and reducing congestion in areas. Partnership working is therefore extremely important. Andrew asked about young people, and you talked about going into schools, but universities are key as well.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): Sorry, Mark, but can you come to your question, please?

Mr Durkan: What interaction have you had with universities? Not exclusively, but a lot of the journeys that students make to university are less complex.

Ms Kerr: Thank you. It may be worth picking up on a couple of points. We have spoken a bit about the fiscal environment and about the fact that we have not had a transport strategy for a number of years. The strategy presents is a really important opportunity. We have perhaps tried to please all people by doing everything before, but the strategy provides much more of a guiding light for decision-making, which, in an environment in which we have less money, hopefully helps us focus on the things that make a difference. Yes, we are ambitious and optimistic, but having a strategy will really help identify the things that matter.

You talked a bit about the transition to electric vehicles and said that not everyone will have an EV in 10 years. We know and recognise that. They do not have to have one. The transition to electric vehicles is up to 2050. We recognise that, right now, there are barriers to people getting an electric vehicle. Through the likes of the zero emission vehicle (ZEV) mandate through the vehicle emissions trading scheme, we hope to see some of the cost barriers removed, as manufacturers become incentivised to sell cars. The most recent advice from the Climate Change Committee (CCC) is that we will see parity quite soon. We will obviously monitor the situation to see whether it is the case. Hopefully, over that time, we will see the transition happen, but we very much recognise that it will not happen in the next 10 years.

Do you want to speak about the university engagement piece, James? It is worth mentioning Ulster University's move to Belfast. The ways in which the universities work with students to encourage fewer of them to drive to university and to use public transport instead have been helpful.

Mr Redmond: I will take it down a level to the transport plans element. It is about understanding what the attractors are for making those journeys. As we develop the transport plans, particularly for the Magee campus in your constituency in Derry/Londonderry, we are taking on board the growth projections for Ulster University but also understanding where people want to travel to and from where they are coming. That influences and informs bus measures and other interventions and projects that we want to introduce. That engagement is ongoing, be it with schools, employers or universities. We want to try to grasp why people travel, where they travel to and how we can influence them to move away from car dependency.

Ms Kerr: We have also picked up on a lot of engagement that has already happened. The key point to make is that the draft strategy will be going out to public consultation, hopefully at the end of the month. Throughout the consultation period, we will be highlighting to people the opportunity to feed back their views and encouraging them to do so.

Mr Durkan: You mentioned drawing down funding from the Shared Island unit. In the transport plan, is there therefore a focus on cross-border routes, for which it might be easier to leverage that funding?

Mr Redmond: In the plans, particularly those for councils areas that are close to the border, we focus not just on the Northern Ireland region but on hubs across the border. For example, in your area, we are looking at the Letterkenny routes and how we can work alongside the National Transport Authority (NTA) and Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII), our counterparts in the South, to bring transport measures together and look at funding opportunities to bring bus measures, or other measures or projects, to the fore. We understand that there is a lot of cross-border movement and want to serve people on both sides of the border.

Mr Durkan: That is, clearly, a massive piece of work in which every Department has a role to play. People have mentioned Health, but look at Education. It is, I suppose, part of the wider community planning piece, but we should look at schools admission policies and things like that. Look at the complex journeys for which people need their cars. Those journeys often entail leaving kids to school. We must ensure that people and planning are close to where services exist to reduce dependency on cars. Has much of that work been done?

Ms Kerr: I was going to say that one of the things that the transport strategy does not address is the schools admission policy.

Mr Durkan: There is a need for a holistic view when you have, for example, people having to traverse the city to go to a nursery 10 miles away.

Mr McGreevy: The strategy reflects policy within the strategic planning policy statement, which sets out the importance of the integration of transportation and land-use planning. When we set up the transport planning process, our key link to the councils will be the council local development plan teams. As they bring forward their local transport plans, we will look at our transport plans to see where the zonings are and how transport can link in with them. It is also important, when they are taking forward zonings, to consider where the existing transport connections are. It is easier to link into an existing connection than it is to try to create a new one. The transport strategy reflects the link between the town planning process, which links back to community planning and the transport planning process. We have very close working relationships with the town planners in councils.

Mr Durkan: OK, thank you. I have one final question.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): Very quickly, Mark, if you do not mind.

Mr Durkan: A few times, you mentioned bus-priority measures. That is very important. People will only get out of their cars and onto buses if they see that taking the bus will be cheaper and will get them to their destination quicker. I am not aware of any bus priority lanes outside Belfast. Are you aware of any plans elsewhere in the Department to pursue bus priority lanes?

Mr McGreevy: As part of the transport planning process, we will be looking at bus priority measures. Those plans are in development. They will be looked at in places like Enniskillen, Omagh and Derry/Londonderry. We are exploring those issues.

Mr Durkan: OK. Thank you.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): Keith, I will let you in very briefly, if you do not mind. We are running short of time.

Mr K Buchanan: There will be no preamble with me, Chair; I will go straight into the questions. [Laughter.]

I have two specific questions. The Chair and Cathal spoke about community transport. Under measure CC11, bullet point 154 of the strategy talks of:

Is any integration of those two taking place? If you could wave a wand between Translink and community transport, what would be the perfect model?

Ms Kerr: I do not want to step on anyone's toes. We have set the high-level direction in the strategy. We have already spoken about reviews of community transport that are taking place and work that Ulsterbus is undertaking. Hopefully, those reviews will indicate where better linkages would benefit us.

Mr Redmond: Community transport now fills the gaps in the provision by the public transport provider, Translink. In the perfect model, everybody would have access to some level of transport to and from wherever they need to get to.

Mr K Buchanan: My point is that there is no perfect model between the two. Translink is not fighting over the same roadway as community transport. You could have a Translink bus going up a rural road with two people on it and, 10 minutes later, a CTA bus going up the same road with one person on it . That is the point.

Mr McGreevy: Through the transport plan process, we are trying to retain a degree of flexibility to allow policies to change. We are looking for the connectivity gaps. In some areas — Fermanagh and Omagh, for example — there are connectivity gaps in smaller settlements and villages. We want to be able to see those connectivity gaps so that we are able to provide links to the main settlements. The stakeholders in that area have told us that accessing healthcare and healthcare centres is a massive issue for them, particularly Altnagelvin Hospital, which is in their region.

Again, this is very hypothetical, but in the transport plans we are looking at the connectivity gaps and showing where we want to create the connections. Clearly, if there is going to be a connection from a main town up to a major centre like Derry, that is probably going to be an Ulsterbus service, but we want to be able to point to where the gap is beyond that and see where the connections exist. The strategy is broad and tries to maintain the space for policy development to happen outside the strategy and in the policy teams, where responsibility for that rightly sits. Again, underneath that, in our transport plans, we are trying to retain that flexibility in our text and in our approach in order to allow those policy developments to happen.

Mr K Buchanan: I have one final quick question. You talked about electric chargers and said that people can charge their cars in their driveway if they have one. Where are we with on-street charging? There is an issue with cables going across the footpath. Where does that issue sit? Maybe that is too specific, but you know the point that I am making.

Ms Kerr: Yes, I understand your point. David and the team have been up here speaking about that before, and I will have an update for you in two weeks' time.

Mr K Buchanan: That is fine. We have loads of questions about on-street charging.

Ms Kerr: We see it as being a major issue that need to be addressed. There is a reason why legislation does not permit cables going across roads; the health and safety of the people who are using the footway. We need to be very careful that in solving one problem we do not create another. As you can imagine, given the health and safety issue, that is something that we are keen to consider properly and do right.

Mr K Buchanan: It would be good to get an update on that next time.

Ms Kerr: Yes, certainly. That is no problem at all.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): Thank you very much. Apologies, we ran a wee bit over time. This is a really important issue for all of our constituencies and we see that it affects everybody. We will look forward to seeing the outworkings of the public consultation and the final plan. Thank you for your time and we will see you very soon, Sian.

Ms Kerr: Yes, I know. Thank you. [Laughter.]

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): At least you are under no illusions about what the questions might be.

Ms Kerr: I know what the questions are now. [Laughter.]

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): Thank you very much.