COVID restrictions have kept most Scots off the roads for months.

Campaigners backed by a former UN expert say that’s why now is the perfect time to reimagine our transport system to tackle poverty and climate change.

Philip Alston’s excoriating 2018 report on extreme poverty in the UK found that UK Government policies had led to the “systematic immiseration [economic impoverishment]” of a significant part of the population.

The then UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty, Alston emphasised how the privatisation and deregulation of public transport had contributed to the suffering he found, saying that “abandoning people to the private market in relation to services that affect every dimension of their basic well-being, without guaranteeing their access to minimum standards, is incompatible with human rights requirements”.

Alston, a professor at New York University, has now launched an investigation into the impact of privatising buses in the UK and is supporting a campaign aimed at transforming travel in Scotland’s biggest city.

Get Glasgow Moving aims to “take back our buses” and create a publicly-owned provider to serve the city. It also seeks to extend the Subway, create a new Transport For London-style body to oversee the region’s services and work towards free journeys for all.

The National:

It’s no small ask. But Alston, who addressed the campaign’s recent meeting over Zoom, says “we have to rethink” what we currently have.

“Is transport a luxury? Is transport a need? Or is transport a right? I think we have to see both as a need and a right, but I think we have to see it as part of an obligation of government,” he says.

The need to make money for shareholders, rather than focus on innovation or affordability, is, Alston says, “the perfect recipe for a bad transport system”.

More than 70% of all public transport journeys in Scotland – 366 million a year – happen by bus.

Passengers experienced a 9% increase in fare prices over and above general inflation between 2015 and 2019.

Usage did, of course, plummet last year and the Scottish Government handed out almost £300 million in public money – including Covid-19 bailouts – to bus firms during the year.

READ MORE: Inequality and poverty to be tackled through extra £7.4m fund

The Scottish Government has a target of net-zero emissions by 2045 and an interim target of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 75% in the next nine years. Ellie Harrison, a co-founder of Get Glasgow Moving, says a transport system overhaul is key to meeting this and delivering for worse-off citizens.

Artist Harrison spent one year within the city limits to investigate the links between “class, capitalism and carbon footprint” in a project that generated headlines and conversation about its purpose and execution.

In her The Glasgow Effect book that followed, she explained the connections she saw between public transport provision with poverty. She now wants the public to start talking as seriously about improving road and rail networks as they did about that project.

“There’s an idea that you don’t talk about public transport in the middle of a pandemic,” she says.

“There are several reasons why it’s really important to do so. Key workers still need public transport to get to work, that’s why we have got to keep the system running. That’s why the Scottish Government has put more than £300m in. There’s a lull in bus use so it’s really important to use this lull as an opportunity to radically redesign the system.

“It’s what makes the economy run smoothly, it’s what makes the economy grow. When people can get around easily and affordably they can get to colleges and jobs and to all the amazing things within the large conurbation of Glasgow.

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“It’s pie in the sky to think they are going to get to climate change targets unless they do a radical transformation of the transport network.”

Glasgow City Council said: “We are exploring a range of options to improve the city’s bus services, and a key focus of our activity at present is working with partners through the Glasgow Bus Partnership to develop a bid for funding from the Scottish Government’s Bus Partnership Fund.

“Within the partnership there is an obvious, strong, shared commitment to delivering real change for the city’s bus services.

“A faster, cheaper, and better-connected bus network will not only benefit Glasgow, but also the wider city region.”