Introduction
Scotland’s National Transport Strategy (NTS2) was launched on the 5th February 2020. It sets out an ambitious and compelling vision for the transport system in Scotland over a 20-year period and outlines our four priorities for delivering this: Reduces Inequalities; Takes Climate Action; Helps Deliver Inclusive Economic Growth; and Improves our Health and Wellbeing. Sitting under these priorities are our strategic policies. In addition to this, we set out more specific and time-constrained commitments for delivering our priorities and strategic policies in our annual NTS Delivery Plans. The most recent was published in December 2024.
Transport impacts on the everyday lives of the people of Scotland of all ages and at all times, underlining and reinforcing its fundamental importance. The transport budget, which includes maintaining and running the current system, as well as providing new infrastructure, is essential for almost all economic and is crucial for wellbeing, in terms of social interaction, from visiting friends and family, to accessing leisure activities and health services.
Transport has a key role to play in addressing inequalities and ensuring a just transition to net zero, both in terms of socio-economic inequality and providing those who need it most with access to communities and labour markets. Transport is also an important foundation for achieving all of the First Minister’s priorities, which include: to eradicate child poverty; grow our economy; tackle the climate emergency, and improve public services. The Scottish Government’s policy programme will focus on these four areas, which align strongly with the four priorities of the National Transport Strategy – reduces inequalities, takes climate action, delivers inclusive economic growth, and improves our health and wellbeing.
To ensure progress is delivered against these priorities, a monitoring and evaluation framework was established, highlighting a range of primary and secondary indicators against which progress towards the NTS outcomes could be measured. An analytical report which provided baseline data for each of these measures was published in June 2022.
In addition, a commitment was made to report to the Scottish Parliament three years on from the launch of the strategy. This report to parliament, published in 2023, provided an overview of the continued commitment to the Strategy and the actions being taken by the Scottish Government to deliver the vision and priorities for transport.
Our monitoring and evaluation approach ensures accountability on progress. It allows us to identify areas where we are performing well and others where we might need to take corrective action. This could be achieved via adjustments to actions in future Delivery Plans, as required, to bring us back on track towards achieving the transport system for the future as envisioned in our Strategy.
This report provides data on headline and secondary indicators from the evaluation framework for the National Transport Strategy, updating the position since the baseline in 2019 and providing commentary on progress. The report provides background on the implementation of the NTS2 before presenting data in both summary and in depth on the key indicators informing progress under each of the four priorities of the strategy.