A RELIANCE on car use in Scotland has “impacted us and made our infrastructure less resilient”, an academic has said.
Dr Faheem Ahmed Malik told The National that the knock-on effect from unreliable public transport inevitably leads to more car use, as people seek a more dependable way to travel.
The lecturer in transport at Napier University said that when there are delays or disruptions caused by extreme weather events or technical faults, the transport system “doesn’t react”.
Malik argued that the demand-driven appraisal approach taken by governments is “flawed” and that more engagement needs to be done with communities.
“We are forcing people into car travel and then we complain about it,” Dr Malik said.
He argued that even a “single bad experience” with unreliable public transport can have a longer-term impact.
“Imagine you are with two children and you just did your shopping and you got stuck because of the say flooding or erratic weather conditions,” he explained.
“Now look at the experience. You will be in a way traumatised, and the first thing you will do is that you'll try to find money or save money so that you buy a good car.
“So what you are doing is that you are taking away people from sustainable transport modes to basically car travel, and the appraisal is presently in favour of the car travel, and so that creates the whole problem.”
According to the Scottish Household Survey in 2023, 74% of households had access to one or more cars, while 30% had access to two or more cars.
Malik said that with car occupancy in Scotland ranging between 1.2 to 1.8 people per car, that would equate to somewhere between 700 and 800 car trips for 100 people.
But for a bus, this would be around 20 buses which could be “easily managed”.
“It gets difficult to get the message to the car travellers,” he added.
“And the whole investment scenario that we are following, it simply doesn't work for the people. It only works for very few.
“Look at the investment decisions in cycling infrastructure. Where you will have the most cycling in the present appraisal is where you expect the more demand, [this is] the demand-driven appraisal.
“It means the people who already have shifted to cycling, you'll have more investment towards them, rather than people who are less likely to cycle.”
He added that this could lead to “transport gentrification”, which is where “a section of the society starts moving away from that area because then you got one-way streets, no car zones, so the people who are forced to use a car”.
“They start moving away from those areas to areas that have lesser access to education, employment, or any healthy transportation.”
But one of the big issues for Scotland’s infrastructure – and tackling the impact of climate change and an increase in extreme weather events – is the diversity of our communities. There are large rural swathes of the country, and a few urban centres, both of which have different issues and are impacted in different ways.
“A classic example is if there’s a closure or there’s erratic weather, you might have a 20-minute detour in Edinburgh or Glasgow,” Malik said.
“But if you go to the Scottish Highlands, it means that you are losing out on one day of work, or you are losing on one day of education, or the worst comes, you are losing your access to healthcare. We know how difficult it's sometimes to get an appointment.”
The A83 Rest and Be Thankful is a prime example of this. The 20-mile stretch of road in Argyll and Bute between Arrochar and Inverary is vulnerable to landslides, generally caused by heavy rain or snow melt. If the Old Military Road can’t be used, motorists can be faced with a 60-mile diversion via Crianlarich.
Malik also noted that the effects of climate change on Scotland’s transport infrastructure cannot be “brushed under the carpet”.
“A classic example is that a few years ago, the annual disruption in Scotland was around 20 annual days that you had disruption due to erratic weather conditions, be it flooding or snow,” he said.
“Now it's almost 62 days a year. It's almost coming to 15%, 20% of your time being affected, and once we start talking about the effect of transportation.
“We need to understand that transportation is a derived demand.
“Very seldomly people just travel just for the sake of traveling. It can be recreational, like a cycling trip to a coast or something like that. But people travel for a reason.”
He argued that the way to modernise public transport in Scotland is to utilise real-time data, using mobile phones and apps to tailor transport needs to a person. Malik pointed to Edinburgh buses, which are publicly owned, and that real-time updates have helped as its a “two-way communication”.
“It's understanding that the user makes decisions,” he said, adding that transport infrastructure should be designed “based upon how people will use it, rather than how they should use it”.
