Stephen Flynn has set out the Government priorities for transport, and, unfortunately, it’s the same old lack of vision, focusing on the side-issues (A9 dualling, ferries, island tunnels, some pussyfooting around airports). Nothing new, nothing fit for the times.

The A9, the principal north-south transport backbone of Scotland, is a perennial problem that just will not go away; a badly designed road based on some misconceptions about what makes for a safe road from more than a half a century ago (a constant-radius road, i.e., a steady chain of bends that, deliberately, make safe overtaking impossible). While dualling will fix the overtaking problem, the real solution would have been to dual the parallel running railway, and force the freight onto the trains. This would have dramatically reduced the volume of traffic, would have been cheaper, and the environmental impact of the freight traffic would have been much lesser.

The responsibility for the ferries, together with the funding, should be moved into the local communities served by them. The central control has been one of the big issues in the reliability of the ferry services. Tunnels in Shetland — why is it that somehow everything in Scotland must always be the responsibility of the central government?

But these are all side matters. The principal transport issue in Scotland is the lack of affordable, reliable and integrated public transport: buses that arrive / depart train stations in sync with the train timetable, etc., and that are faster and compellingly cheaper than the private car. That’s where the Scottish Government should be fully invested in.

I thought perhaps some of the new blood would inject some fresh thinking into Scottish politics, but it seems the new generation of Scottish politicians has no vision of its own at all. I blame the professionalisation of politics, and the entrenchment of the party system; it’s as if the Parliament is a giant grey blob that has reached a critical mass that makes it impossible to change course on anything of substance.