Context and Introduction

Introduction

Our public transport system is a key enabler for growth and opportunity – providing the vital link between where people live, learn, earn and socialise. Access to affordable and reliable public transport services helps people and communities unlock opportunities to connect to jobs, education, retail, public services, leisure, recreation and social and family networks.

A sustainable and viable public transport system is also vital in achieving our ambitious targets on climate change mitigation. Scotland`s National Transport Strategy (NTS2) sets out a vision that:- “We will have a sustainable, inclusive, safe and accessible transport system, helping deliver a healthier, fairer and more prosperous Scotland for communities, businesses and visitors.”

The Scottish Government published the “Fair Fares Review” on 22 March 2024. The Review sets out our aim to ensure the public transport system is more accessible, available, and affordable, with the costs of transport more fairly shared across government, business, and society. It also highlights the challenges facing public transport and presents options on the immediate to short and medium to long-term actions that are available to reform our current transport offering, to support delivery of a quality, accessible, available and affordable integrated public transport system.

As part of the Fair Fares Review, a pathfinder Pilot was established (the “ScotRail Peak Fares Removal Pilot”) to encourage modal shift from car to rail by reducing the cost of travel at peak times for a period of six months between 2 October 2023 and 29 March 2024. As part of the 2024/25 Scottish Government Budget, this was subsequently extended for a further three months scheduled to end on 28 June 2024 and extended again for a further three months to the end of September 2024 following the appointment of John Swinney as First Minister. This resulted in the Pilot running for a full twelve months, which allowed 9 months of data to be analysed to provide a robust assessment of the impact before a decision was made in August 2024 as to whether it should be made permanent.

Affordability issues meant that the decision was made the pilot would not be made permanent at that time, but the decision would be revisited if funds became available. An announcement was made as part of the 2025 Programme for Government that peak fares would be removed from the ScotRail network from September 2025.

The nature of this document

This document forms an Outline Business Case for the permanent removal of peak fares from the ScotRail network and provides an analysis of a number of options for doing so, in terms of interaction between different ticket types, concessionary cards and implementation options. This document also covers the areas of impact specified within the suite of Impact Assessments required by Scottish Government.

These consist of:

Required

  • EQIA – Equalities Impact Assessment
  • FSD – Fairer Scotland Duty
  • CD - Consumer Duty
  • BRIA - Business and Regulatory Impact Assessment
  • Strategic Environmental IA

The required material and impacts are considered within the Socio-Economic case.

Not required

  • Children's Rights and wellbeing IA - this is not legislation nor strategic decision relating to the rights and wellbeing of children
  • Data Protection IA – there is no processing personal data as a result of the decision
  • Island Communities IA - no specific impact on island communities although this clearly means that island communities are not directly benefited by the change, other than through mainland rail journeys (which are perhaps less likely to be at peak times).

The 5 Cases Model and the Preferred Option And Options Appraisal

The normal form of the 5 case/dimension model and its links to Scottish Transport Appraisal Guidance and Transport Scotland’s Investment decision making processes can be found here: 4 The Five Case Model.

There is no Strategic Outline case for the proposal as the pilot and subsequent evaluation are, building on the Fair Fares Review, considered to be what established the “decision to develop further” stage that led to the PfG announcement.

This OBC forms the basis for the decision to implement (rather than go to formal procurement) as the policy will be enacted via an ask to ScotRail (SRT) via ScotRail Holdings (SRH).

The 5 dimensions considered in this OBC are, as standard – the Strategic, Socio-Economic, Financial, Managerial and Commercial dimensions. In more detail:

  • The Strategic case – this section gives the wider context of the policy and covers the results of the evaluation of the trial as well as establishing updates outcomes for the intervention.
  • The Socio-Economic Case – this section updates the evidence from the evaluation of the trial to present an updated view of the value for money of the project.
  • The Financial case – this section examines the costs (feeding into the Socio-Economic Dimension) and crucially, the affordability of the project.

Given that the project will be delivered through SRH/SRT the commercial case (how the project will be delivered) and given the experience of the pilot, the managerial case (how the project will be managed) for the project are relatively simple.

Link between the outline business case and options appraisal

This OBC contains an assessment of various options for the implementation of the permanent removal of peak fares. It compares these options against a Do-Minimum that represents the current position of ScotRail fares (as at End May 2025). The starting point is the PfG announcement, specifically:

“Abolishing peak rail fares permanently from 1 September, to encourage more people to travel by train, reduce car journeys, and help existing peak time rail passengers with the cost of living. A significant marketing programme will support the abolition.”