End of the road for Transport Scotland

[och aye]

It'll be interesting to see if Transport Scotland is abolished, what replaces it and if that will be a good or bad thing for the railways (and transport in general) in Scotland.

A friend of mine who was working on a transport project at the time when TS had just been created, said for a Government Agency they were actually quite positive to deal with. I don't think many people have many positive words to say about it any more! However, I wonder how much of that is due to the various Transport ministers who have been in and out of the door in the intervening years...

Revealed: End of the road for Transport Scotland after years of ferry turmoil

SCOTLAND'S troubled transport agency faces the axe under SNP plans for one of the biggest ever shake ups in how ferries, roads and railways are…

www.heraldscotland.com

Scotland's troubled transport agency faces the axe under SNP plans for one of the biggest ever shake ups in how ferries, roads and railways are operating, it can be revealed.

Transport Scotland, the Scottish Government body responsible for overseeing Scotland's roads, rail network and ferries, is set to lose its standalone status and be absorbed into the heart of the new SNP-led government in a move understood to be creating uncertainty within its near 600 permanent staff.

The move, revealed in a written election pledge associated with the party's manifesto seen by The Herald, aims to tear up the country's transport bureaucracy and bring key powers back under direct ministerial control.

It has raised further questions about the future of national transport bodies such as the ferries and port owners Caledonian Maritime Assets Limited (CMAL) and Scotland's seven regional transport partnerships, including Strathclyde Partnership for Transport (SPT), which is responsible for the Glasgow Subway.

The new transport secretary Stephen Flynn confirmed that it was progressing the changes to Transport Scotland and was planning to deliver "bold reform" .

He said the current transport system "does many things well but it has evolved incrementally into a complex landscape of national bodies, agencies and local actors, with blurred accountabilities, mixed levels of integration and strategic coherence".