New Petitions

No, thank you, convener. I am happy for committee members to speak first.

I shall try to take the points in the order in which they were stated. The railway was designed back in the 1890s so that the Duke of Sutherland, who was a rail buff, could have more railways on his land. It loops in towards Lairg and then back to the coast. If one could cut across by the Dornoch firth, that would reduce the time taken to get to the far north by anything up to 40 minutes, according to modern estimates. Two thousand to 3,000 people now live in the Lairg area in central Sutherland, but there are potentially 30,000 customers in north Sutherland, Caithness and Orkney who would use the railway if it was a good deal faster. Corus rail engineering consultants have done a preliminary study that suggests that a bridge at Dornoch and improvements to the railway in the far north, such as creating a loop at Hallkirk, would speed up the train to Thurso and could reduce the journey time to roughly the same as that for the road journey.Last winter, a picture appeared of a service bus that had gone off the road on an icy stretch near the Ord of Caithness. In most parts of the country, people have a choice between road and rail. Currently, it takes more than four hours to travel by rail a distance that is not as far as the distance from Inverness to Edinburgh, which takes much less time to travel by rail. Fewer and fewer people in the north are willing to use the railway and the service is hanging on by a thread.The Lairg loop issue could be partly dealt with by commuter services, to which John Farquhar Munro just referred. A new service called Invernet, which will start in December, will run commuter trains from Kingussie to Inverness and through to Tain. There will be five commuter trains a day to Tain. However, it was announced yesterday that one of the trains will start in the morning at Lairg. Therefore, the new commuter train will serve the commuter area that is furthest from Inverness.A faster service to Caithness would not stop at the stations between Inverness and Tain, but would speed up over that section to get passengers to the north more quickly. A recent study—one of many—showed that the vast bulk of passengers who use the line go the whole distance up to Thurso and Wick. Currently, those who want to get to Wick must go to Thurso first because the route is T-shaped—the train comes to a junction where it must go west to Thurso, then come back to the junction to go on to Wick. That has been the arrangement for the past 20 years or so, but the train used to split into two to take passengers in both directions. Frankly, the railway is hanging on by a thread. If the service was improved, that could lead to a far greater number of people living in the area.I was a member of the Stirling-Alloa-Kincardine Railway and Linked Improvements Bill Committee. One of the major arguments for having a rail service for Alloa, which is 8 miles from Stirling, was that it was needed to encourage people to travel to places where there is work. Currently, people in the north cannot afford to take the chance of travelling by road because of the particularly awful weather that we get. The committee has received petitions on maternity services in Caithness, which stressed that the 100-mile road route to Inverness can be very dangerous. It is important to give people a choice.I dispute John Farquhar Munro's view that the rolling stock has improved. The longest journeys are between Inverness and Thurso and the service has some of the poorest rolling stock in Scotland. The modern trains that run between Glasgow and Edinburgh are fine, but the service in the north is not a commuter service; it is a long-distance service between communities, with many smaller communities in between.The developments that we seek will take time and money, but the petition asks the Executive to be open-minded and consider innovative solutions. Indeed, as I said earlier, Corus rail consultants—who were formerly British Rail people—have produced a scheme that could reduce journey times. They are involved in major developments in Scotland and Britain and are up-to-date, railway people to the core. They believe that journey times in the north can be improved and that the costs can be justified. Any long-distance line must stand or fall on the costs issue.John Scott might be right that many people choose to go by car rather than by rail, but older people, including older visitors, and travellers who take bikes increasingly prefer to use the railway. The line is scenic, but that is not the point. We must apply an appraisal system that allows longer-distance lines to be considered for investment. The Scottish transport appraisal guidelines favour short-distance routes, such as the proposed Bathgate to Airdrie line, which create natural links. However, there are questions about other developments in the Executive's current consultation on rail priorities. The far north of Scotland could do with an increase in population through the decentralisation of jobs from the central belt. When Alloa was considered as a place to which decentralised jobs might go, one criterion was that it should have a railway that was suitable for carrying people there in a decent time.There are many arguments to support the view that the issue must be considered in detail. The problem is a long-standing one that cannot be solved just by plumping for roads instead. We need to give people choice. We need a modern form of transport that meets our needs, that responds to climate change and that contributes to the sustainability of communities in such areas, which feel isolated.

The fact is that a proper assessment must be carried out before we know what the costs would be. We bandy around figures such as £300 million for a tramline in Edinburgh, £500 million for the M74 extension and similar figures for rail links to the airports in the central belt, but we could deal with the Killiecrankie tunnel, the Orton loop, the line from Inverness to Aberdeen and the improvements in the far north for about £150 million. Those measures would extend the network to the whole country, so it would be quicker for freight to travel from the far north to the central belt. Working out an exact cost would be part of the development of the petition into a proper study. I cannot give an exact figure, but I know that the cost today would be far greater than it would have been when the Tory Government turned down the possibility in the mid-1980s, at which point European money was available.A solution to the injustice is long overdue. We must give people in Caithness the feeling that they are part of the whole nation and that we are taking into account their transport wishes. The community councils are asking for that, not me. The people who live in the far north—not the Friends of the Far North Line, who do not live there—are looking for your help to have the matter dealt with rationally.

Yes, although some people are more strongly in favour than others. We want to reflect the views of people in the community, not my views or those of other members. I doubt whether any local members would question either the right of people to make the proposal or their intent, as stated in the careful wording that is before the committee, to take into account not just the needs of Caithness, but those of central Sutherland.

Yes.