TRANSPORT BUDGET

The Executive are committed to putting 70% of their transport budget into public transport which effectively means railways. Since road traffic amounts to 43 billion kilometers a year & rail traffic about 1 billion it is obvious that this 70% will be largely wasted, & that it is being done for purely political reasons. If the money was spent proportionately to traffic need there would be no problem widening the M8 & properly linking it to the Edinburgh bypass & that this would be far more use in making transport between the cities easier than the proposed spending of £3 billion on a high speed rail link.

We should put the Executive's transport budget under the control of a committee of qualified engineers rather than politicians, with instructions to hand out contracts on commercial terms & to decide on improvements purely on the basis of cost effective improvements in traffic flow.

REFERENCES
Department intends that 70 per cent of its transport budget will be spent on public transport in the nine years to 2010/11 (sect 1.6)

Scottish transport Statistics They only give the number of train journeys at 63 million whereas car journeys are only given, for some reason, as 43 billion kilometers travelled but assuming 16 kilometers ae the average, which is probably high considering most train journeys are to & from work, we get 1 billion kilometers.