Next Steps/Phase

As part of the 2024-25 Budget Statement, Scottish Ministers announced that the Pilot had been extended for a further three months until 28 June 2024. Both ScotRail and Transport Scotland intend to undertake a second wave of research in Spring 2024 which will inform the final evaluation of the Pilot. This evaluation will be undertaken using the same methodology as the interim evaluation and will form the basis of any decision over the long-term viability of removing peak rail fares in Scotland. 

The second wave of research will be refined in light of the challenges explained in this report e.g. repeated severe weather incidents, increasing the response rate across all groups but especially the harder to reach, group 3 – new to rail - to ensure a robust evidence base to inform the final evaluation of the Pilot. 

The final evaluation will specifically pick up on the following issues raised by this report:

• The counterfactual of what demand would have been without the pilot in place.
• A rigorous assessment of the impact on bus services as well as the extent of mode shift from private car.
• Examination of specific issues around ticket sales – for example the non-use of returns inflating demand figures.
• The extent to which crowding is impacting on services.
• A final assessment of the Value for Money of the pilot. This will include distributional effects that weight the impact by the groups who most benefit from the change and a projection of how the costs of the policy might change over time.
• Full additional costs to ScotRail over the 9 month pilot.

Overall, the initial outcomes of the trial are somewhat encouraging and suggest it has the potential of achieving its key objectives of making rail travel more affordable, increasing rail travel and attracting rail journeys from cars whilst remaining within the budget envelope.