Key Highlights by Workstream

Planning and Strategy

David Hunter co-led this workstream with Elliot Cooper. The Convener sharing responsibility. In November 2023 David completed his second term with MACS and Lynn Pilkington joined Elliot. This team also includes the other Workstream Leads ensuring connection across all areas of the committee’s work, facilitating the sharing or knowledge, and preventing silo working. This year’s main achievements include:

Monitoring and Evaluation Subgroup

MACS was instrumental in establishing the need for routine and robust data collation and monitoring to help assess and evaluate the progress of transport strategies and frameworks. Transport Scotland’s Analytical Team responded to our call and helped develop a group to work in this area and agree a data set that would help us to monitor and evidence how we reduce the mobility gap. The group consists of MACS Planning and Strategy Leads, TS Analytical Team, TS Accessible Travel Team, and Disability Equality Scotland (DES).

This work also focused on Transport and Disability – where MACS were again instrumental in establishing the need for routine monitoring and publication of data (annual reports such as Disability and Transport first published in 2019 and again in Oct 2023) that shows how disabled people travel; an essential complement to our work to reduce the mobility gap between non disabled people and disabled people.

The findings of these reports will assist with identifying not only the mobility gap but how we can improve the Availability, Accessibility and Affordability of transport as we look to shift, where possible, to more sustainable modes of travel on our just transition to Net Zero.

Motability

MACS prepared briefings, engaged with Motability and Motability Operations, as well assigned Social Security directorate to update on the position we (and others) identified that has resulted in the inequity of Motability business model. MACS continued to place their business model and profiteering from disabled people under scrutiny at the request of disabled people and Motability customers in Scotland.

MACS believe that this made a significant contribution to Motability accepting the need to return some of the vast profits being made through the charging/lease mechanism to their customers (disabled people). There is more work to do here as Motability continues resist the level of change needed, which includes stopping the practice of charging disabled people more than needed for the government subsidised leases and automatically “clawing in” disabled people’s support payment uplifts resulting in the accumulation of annual profits of over £1.2 billion routinely.

Mobility and Driving Assessment Centres

MACS Motability Subgroup raised awareness of the need to explore the suitability, location and capacity of Mobility Centres and Driving Assessment Centres in Scotland. It is pleasing that the Minister for Transport (Ms. Hyslop) gave a commitment to respond and work across portfolios and directorates to explore this issue.

Bus, Taxis and Community Transport

Graham Dunn and Lesley Macinnes were our Workstream Leads for Bus, Taxis and Community Transport supported by Joanne Devitt, Catherine Barile and Nariese Whyte. This year’s main achievements include:

Development Day

In April, our first development day of the year was themed around Bus. Guests included TS Bus Policy officials, Greig MacKay (Bus Users UK), Olivia Sklenar (Lothian Buses), Ralph Roberts (McGills Buses), Gordon Dickson and Donald Booth (SPT).

The day was an enormous success and allowed MACS to build and strengthen relationships with the guests. The day presented opportunities for us to inform guests of MACS work and allow them opportunities to hear directly what disabled people were raising as the barriers when attempting to use bus. More information on this themed Development Day can be found in Section Nine – Development Days.

Hate Crime Charter

During this year MACS continued to work with Disability Equality Scotland, and Transport Scotland on Disability Hate Crime with a focus on public transport. Having previously contributed to the work on the Hate Crime Charter and the proposed hate crime awareness videos, this was continued with input on the revised hate crime training workshop facilitated by Disability Equality Scotland, Police Scotland, and British Transport Police.

The Hate Crime Charter takes an intersectional approach and aims to encourage transport providers, members of the public and other service providers to support a zero-tolerance approach to hate crime in Scotland’s public transport network. This work underpins the Scottish Governments commitment to tackle hatred and prejudice in Scotland.

Ferries and Aviation

Hilary Stubbs led the Ferries and Aviation Workstream until her second term ended in November 2023. Prior to this a period of succession planning allowed Anne MacLeod to pick up seamlessly from Hilary, tapping into MACS established networks for all things Ferries and Aviation, strengthened by Anne bringing her own existing networks, stakeholders and community voices and experiences to the fore in our work as an Islander. Anne is supported by Naghat Ahmed, Lynsey Shovlin, Zara Todd and the Convener, Linda Bamford. This year’s main achievements include:

Development Day

In August, our second development day of the year was themes on Ferries. Guests included TS Director of Ferries, the Repopulation and Islands Communities Policy Lead from the Islands Team Ferries and CALMAC’s Transport Planning Manager.

The day was an immense success and allowed MACS to build and strengthen relationships with the guest speakers. More information on this themed Development Day can be found in Section Nine – Development Days.

Islands Connectivity Plan

During this year MACS welcomed the approach from TS Ferries Team to be involved in the ten initial engagement sessions to inform the Islands Connectivity Plan (ICP). These sessions were also attended by various key stakeholders and Regional Transport Partnerships and were used to identify the options that would be considered as part of the scoping work on the ICP. The workstream look forward to continuing to engage in this developing policy area to ensure the needs of disabled people are central as the various elements of the ICP develop.

Anne quickly defined her own approach to work-stream activities, which included early engagements with TS Ferries Team, responding to the draft Island’s Connectivity Plan (ICP) Strategic Approach paper, receiving an updated draft of the Long-Term Plan for Vessels and Ports – (now Vessels and Ports Plan). These strategies and plans were undergoing final review and preparation for publication in 2024 and MACS input from an islander’s experience and perspective was welcomed and greatly beneficial.

Ferries Engagement

Anne also met with Transport Scotland’s Ferries Strategy Programme Manager and some members of the Clyde & Hebrides Ferry Services Team (CHFS3) at a stakeholders engagement event in Stornoway as well as accepting an invitation to attend a meeting with the Ferries Community Board to promote the work of MACS and discuss ways of working together to influence positive change which will benefit all ferry users.

Rail

Simon Watkins is our Workstream Lead Rail supported by Michael Tornow, Catherine Barile, and Lynsey Shovlin. This year’s main achievements include the following:

MACS advocated for improvements in the accessibility of rail travel (including the need for level boarding and accessible rail stations) and were pleased to hear ScotRail is now committed to their future rolling stock (other than Inter-City trains) being designed to allow level boarding. This is a huge move forward for an accessible railway in Scotland, and will eliminate issues with ramps etcetera, giving disabled passengers an enhanced level of independence (and indeed others, such a people with buggies and luggage).

MACS very much welcome this progress, and it is so good to see Scotland at the forefront of accessibility improvements.

Our rail workstream submitted a Freedom of Information request to ScotRail on its booking office closures Equality Impact Assessments (EqIA) to seek an understanding of how any impacts were identified and measured on those sharing protected characteristics, such as disabled people. Our initial submission was refused leaving the route to obtain this information being through an appeal to the Information Commissioner. However, due to our Workstream Lead’s perseverance, in April 2023 ScotRail released the EqIA prior to the Commissioner having to come to a decision. MACS are hopeful that this has established a precedent for the publicly owned ScotRail.

Our Rail Workstream (via Michael Tornow) engaged with ScotRail managers to highlight accessibility constraints with the journey planner on ScotRail’s website. This led to a review of the National Rail Enquiries Journey Checker, which ScotRail’s information uses. MACS identified the changes made by National Rail Enquiries that had made the information inaccessible and ScotRail took actions to discuss this with National Rail Enquiries.

As a result, the National Rail Enquiries Journey Checker has now been improved.

Roads, Infrastructure, and Active Travel

Susan Fulton is our Workstream Lead Roads, Infrastructure and Active Travel supported by Michael Tornow, Naghat Ahmed, Nariese Whyte, Zara Todd and Graham Dunn. This year’s main achievements include the following:

Pavement Parking

MACS engaged with TS Road Policy Team in the run up to the Pavements Parking going live on 11 December 2023. Our message was clear – there should be no street exemptions.

Committee continued to raise concerns with TS Roads Policy Team around the potential for some Local Authorities to take an approach that supported excessive exemptions; asked how this would be monitored to ensure exemptions guidance was complied with, including evidenced through robust and collaborative Equality Impact Assessments (EqIAs); that they liaise with TS Communication Team to request that they raise the profile of the ban through their social media as it did not seem to be getting the level of exposure needed. This push from MACS was a follow up to our previous engagements in 2022-2023 and earlier in 2023-2024, where we ensured the Minister for Transport was aware of our position and the rationale behind our call for no street exemptions.

This included the need to keep pavements free of obstructions, which are barriers to disabled people being able to complete the first and last mile of their door to door journey and the need to ensure pavements are kept clear to avoid pedestrians (who can) needing to use the road to pass the obstructed pavement, putting themselves in danger.

MACS advice set out the links between the need for clear, well maintained, well- lit and unobstructed pavements to enable more disabled people to safely switch modes and engage with sustainable and active travel as we seek to reduce car kilometres by 20% by 2030 and promote liveable local neighbourhoods.

Our other ask in this area being that the Accessible Travel Framework Annual Delivery Plan focused on the Pavement Parking Ban and advocating against excessive exemptions to progress the clear pathways work areas of the framework, which was prioritised within the 13 work packages in 2016.

Low Emission Zones

Our Roads, Infrastructure and Active Travel Workstream engaged with TS Blue Badge Team to ensure the needs of disabled people and blue badge holders were considered in the run up to the first live LEZ in Scotland (Glasgow – 1 June 2023). This work included testing the website to applying for exemptions before the go- live date and ensuring that exemptions could be applied for in several ways and not only on-line. This included ensuring people could apply in writing, by phone and that information was available in various formats.

MACS also attended the webinar run by Disability Equality Scotland (DES), Glasgow Disability Alliance (GDA) and Transport Scotland (TS) to discuss Low Emission Zones (LEZ) and Blue Badges to safeguard the needs of disabled people and to hear of any concerns from the wider disabled community.

MACS will keep a light touch on this work as further LEZs go live from 2024 onwards.

Glasgow Avenues Project

During engagement on the Avenues project in Glasgow, Michael Tornow was able to influence the design including kerbs heights being raised to 60mm, or in some cases 100mm so that they are detectable and in line with current guidance. This increase in height enabled more people including those whose vision is impaired to easily detect the different areas.

This engagement also brought about further one to one discussion with Glasgow City Council’s project lead for their Avenues to explore their plans for the changes proposed for Argyll Street. This led to a 3D model mock-up of the proposed “floating” bus stop arrangements being developed, which was then presented to the Inclusive Accessible Design Forum.

MACS’s participation in this Forum resulted in several wins for accessibility in the Argyll Street design example; where the street is one way street the Council are now placing bi-directional cycle lanes on the right-hand side of the street, which avoids the need for floating bus stops to be introduced – as recommended by Michael Tornow. The Council now have a wider policy in place for the Avenues of avoiding “floating” bus stops where possible.

Monklands Hospital

MACS had discussions with Keppie Design, the team leading on the design of the new Monklands Hospital. Our particular interest lay around their consultation and engagement processes, which Committee see as an exemplar of good practice in terms of the benefits from early engagement with communities, groups representing disabled people and how the site was designed in relation to patient transport; how patients arrive at the hospital, their journey to the assessment centre and, the location of any discharge lounges. MACS were also able to confirm the importance of patient transport drop off locations in relation to discharge lounges.

Scottish Roadworks Commissioner

MACS have had strong engagement from the Scottish Roadworks Commissioner and will carry this forward into our 2024-25 work plan to emphasise the barriers faced by disabled people if roadworks are not accessible.

Position Papers

Our RIAT Workstream Lead developed a suite of position papers for the Committee covering the areas below. These are extremely valuable to ensure agreement and transparency on of our position and that all members are messaging on the same lines.

MACS Position Papers:

• 20-Minute Neighbourhoods
• Active Travel
• Engagement and Co-Production
• Equality Impact Assessments (EqIAs)
• Electric Vehicle (EV) Charging
• Transport to Health and Social Care
• Mobility Centres
• Motability
• Rail
• Train Boarding