Summary

As part of the Fair Fares Review, a pathfinder Pilot was established, the “ScotRail Peak Fares Removal Pilot” (the Pilot) to encourage modal shift from car to rail by reducing the cost of travel at peak times, for a period of initially six months between 2 October 2023 and 29 March 2024 and eventually a full year to end September 2024. The aims and objectives of the Pilot were as follows:

• Improve awareness of rail as a viable travel choice
• Improve access to rail by reducing the cost of travel at peak times, enabling more people to travel more often
• Reduction in private car travel as more people choose to travel by rail

The survey results suggest that the Pilot has been successful in improving awareness of rail as a viable travel choice with over 80% of survey respondents stating that they were making more trips by rail and of these, around ¾ suggested that the primary reason for this was the Pilot. The Pilot did significantly reduce the cost of travel by rail at peak times with the average saving across all ticket types being around 17% and significant savings were reported by users.

The analysis undertaken is heavily influenced by the choice of counterfactual – what would have happened had the Pilot not been in place. This is made more complicated by the recovery path of rail passenger demand from the pandemic. A number of scenarios were assessed and used for detailed modelling. The scenario viewed as most realistic – that without the Pilot in place, demand would have returned to 90% of pre-pandemic levels as reflected across the rest of the UK – results in an increase in demand from the pilot of 6.8%. This represents around 4 million extra rail journeys over nine months, of which 2 million are journeys that would previously have been made by private car. This is in the context of around 5 billion annual private car journeys in Scotland and represents a reduction of less than 0.1% of car based carbon-emissions.

There remains some uncertainty around the demand impacts, with a more negative view suggesting that the impact was instead around 2.4%. This has a resultant impact on the estimates of costs which are in the annual range of £25 million to £30 million per annum (in 2024 prices) with the possibility of being as large as £40 million. Noting that these figures include the additional costs incurred by ScotRail as well as the net loss of revenue.

There are regional variations in the impact with the greatest being observed in the Central Belt, specifically on the East Suburban network around Edinburgh and the Express Edinburgh to Glasgow routes. There is some evidence that the pilot has encouraged commuting from smaller towns into larger population centres, but this is localised and may be better addressed by looking at individual fare levels.

The Value for Money (VfM) analysis, suggests that the removal of ScotRail peak fares has a Benefit Cost Ratio of between 1.2 and 1.5 or between £1.20 and £1.50 of value for each pound of cost. Taking into account the relative incomes of those benefiting (tending to be those on above average income), reduces this to 1.0 to 1.25. This represents between £1 and £1.25 of value for every £1 spent.

The surveys undertaken have identified some emerging evidence of sustained behaviour change arising from the Pilot, including shifting the time of travel from off-peak to peak and mode shift from car to rail. This evidence suggests around half (52%) of existing rail users who changed their behaviour because of the Pilot, have made at least one rail journey that they previously made using another travel mode, with half of those journeys from car. Of those new rail passengers identified as switching from other modes, 54% had previously used a car as a driver, and a third had switched from bus. However, this is in the context of an increase in an estimated increase in demand of 2.4% on the lower end and 6.8% at the higher end – meaning the vast majority of the increase in passengers were existing rail users making existing journeys.

There is some moderate evidence that the Pilot has encouraged rail use amongst low to middle income households whilst primarily benefiting existing users who tended to be above average income. There is strong evidence that the Pilot has helped existing users who are in work and encouraged greater rail travel amongst this group but has had a lower impact in encouraging full-time workers who did not use rail to use it. In terms of age, there is some, relatively weak evidence that the Pilot has encouraged older users to use rail when they didn’t before and has encouraged 31- to 40-year-old existing users to travel more by rail.

In summary, the Pilot has been somewhat successful in meeting the objectives of increasing awareness of rail and improving access but has had minimal impacts on overall car travel and has tended to benefit those on higher incomes within the Central Belt. What is clear, however, from the robust analysis undertaken, is that there has not been a significant shift from car to rail use and limited impact in terms of meeting the First Minister’s priorities for Scotland.