Borders commuter says the reintroduction of peak rail fares is 'extremely frustrating'
ITV Border's reporter Lucy Anderson speaks to a commuter who will be affected by the reintroduction of peak rail fares next month.
A Borders commuter who has been forced to move back in with her parents due to rising costs, has described the reintroduction of peak rail fares as 'extremely frustrating'.
Kate Ferguson, who commutes into Edinburgh, moved back in with her parents due to rent prices in the city being unaffordable.
She said: "Now I have to commute to work in order to get there so that I can save up and hopefully get a place out in Edinburgh. A round trip will be about 30 miles and getting to Edinburgh then takes another hour, which with the costs of that is about £350 a month.
"With the prices changing, it means I work from home a lot more instead of going into the office, because my ultimate goal is to save."
Kate is saving up so she can move back to Edinburgh, but with the pilot scheme ending, it's kicked back her saving plan.
She said: "A good four or five months it's going to delay my savings by, which is huge. Then you have other factors in life which hinder your savings and the way that the economy is going. This is just going to add on to another obstacle.
"It's extremely frustrating, because the whole reason to come back down and to commute was to save. Now with this massive addition, it just makes that saving go further away."
Scotland's First Minister John Swinney has insisted the target to cut car usage by the end of this decade can still be met despite his government axing a trial scheme for cut-price rail fares. The initiative will end on 27 September 2024.
Critics have warned that the end of the year-long trial will force more commuters onto the roads. The scheme abolished peak rate tickets, enabling passengers to pay-off peak fares regardless of the time of travel.
It was introduced in a bid to reduce 20% of kilometres travelled by car by 2030.
Mr Swinney believes the £40m bill per year for the scheme meant it was "not justified to continue the pilot at that cost."
Expert advisers believe it would be "extraordinarily difficult" for the reducing emissions target to be met, said at the Climate Change Committee in April 2024.
Marion Short, Chair of Campaign for Borders Rail, believes it is the wrong thing to do.
She said: "It's a retrograde step and I think they should be encouraging people to use the train more. Particularly in line with the fact that the Scottish Government have targets to meet in terms of climate control.
"Commuters are now happily working from home. If they introduce peak travel again, that's going to affect this group of people considerably.
"Does it mean they are going to lose more passengers again as opposed to creating more passenger numbers?"
Borders MSP Christine Grahame, SNP
When questioned whether the target could be met, First Minister Swinney said: "Yes, I think it can."
He added this "obviously requires changes in behaviour from members of the public" - saying achieving this was "not focused simply on one particular policy intervention".
He added that while the peak fares pilot had "demonstrated a limited amount of success", and had boosted rail passenger numbers to "some extent", it had "not delivered the modal shift we had hoped would be the case".
With the scheme requiring "significant amounts of public investment to make it work" and the Scottish Government "operating under significant financial constraint", Mr Swinney said it had not been possible to continue with it.
"We simply cannot continue to invest those resources because the money is not available to continue that subsidy," the First Minister added.
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