April 20 2026

Senior Public Affairs Manager for Scotland, Sara Collier, reviews what the Holyrood 2026 manifestos mean for bus and coach operators - and passengers across Scotland.

With cost of living continuing to dominate voter concerns, some of the most attention grabbing pledges focus on fares - a £2 cap on bus fares from the SNP and free bus travel for all from the Scottish Greens (following an interim step of extending concessions to under-30s and introducing a £2 fare). With both parties polling strongly and previously working together in Government these commitments warrant closer scrutiny in terms of cost and deliverability.

The full promise from the SNP is “by the end of the parliament we will take forward legislation to put in place a £2 bus fare cap across Scotland” indicating implementation may not be immediate and placed on a statutory footing, unlike the current voluntary caps in England and Wales. What this means for the future of concessionary travel would also have to be considered, given their current reimbursement being based on single fares.

We’re currently only weeks into a year-long (if the £10m budget stretches that far) £2 fare cap pilot across the HITRANS and ZetTrans areas. This pilot will have to be strongly evaluated from the start if it is to form any realistic basis for a nationwide scheme.

Beyond fares, on models of ownership and operation including franchising, the Scottish Greens set out the most detailed proposals for funding local control and community involvement via ‘Scottish Bus Bonds’. Scottish Labour would set aside £200m and reform regulations to fast-track franchising of local bus services.

SNP and Liberal Democrat commitments on this front are vaguer – the former to “support the use of franchising to guarantee socially necessary routes in underserved areas through franchising while creating greater alignment of investment with our net-zero goals” with the latter favouring a “Transport for London model…backed by stronger regional transport partnerships and an expansion of demand responsive transport”.

Infrastructure and journey times receive less consistent attention. Our polling earlier this month shows that bus priority is supported by a majority of voters across the political spectrum, but it has patchy coverage in manifestos. There is no mention from the SNP. While bus priority features in the recently published Climate Change Plan, it is unclear whether this will translate into delivery at the scale required. Reform UK want to “support and invest in bus corridors in our major cities” and the Greens would “reduce congestion in our towns and cities through removing barriers to local councils installing bus priority lanes, investing in bus priority infrastructure, and press for the devolution of roads taxation to Scotland”.

Safety – another CPT Scotland priority – does feature more prominently in the form of removing free bus passes from those who carry out antisocial behaviour (Labour and Conservatives), deploying transport safety officers (Greens) and greater protections for public transport workers (Greens, Labour and SNP). Clarity is required from the SNP on their pledge to extend existing emergency and retail worker protections to public transport – does this apply to bus if it’s listed under the heading ‘protecting rail workers’?

A common feature in manifestos is integrated ticketing, featuring in the Conservative, Green, Labour and Lib Dem manifestos. Again, the SNP are silent on this.

There is also limited recognition of the role of coach travel across manifestos, although the SNP pledges further investment in the Rural Tourism Investment Fund which could lead to improved parking and facilities at popular locations, and there are other tourism and roads related pledges which will be of interest.

If there is one issue candidates are sure to hear about on the doorstep it’s potholes, and it’s hard to quibble with the cross-party focus on fixing our roads. Fixing roads can improve journeys for all users. However, the impact of road works on bus and coach operations must be better managed, with improved coordination and communication to minimise disruption.

Reform UK, Conservatives and the Lib Dems commit to specific actions on road works – Reform want lane rental as in England, while the Lib Dems suggest ‘increasing the powers of the Scottish Road Works Commissioner to provide a more user-friendly data-driven central register of road works, clearer timetabling and lead-in times, new avenues for problems to be flagged and addressed, a stronger regime of fines where works run over, and more night and weekend working by companies to minimise disruption and congestion’. The Conservatives also want the Commissioner to have more powers to take enforcement action.

Other policies worthy of mention include a Small Town and Rural Services Bus Fund (Conservatives), support for the manufacturing of Scottish-built zero-emissions buses (Greens), free public transport for major sporting and cultural events (Greens) and a ‘Safer Night Design Champion’ (SNP).

A central test for all of these commitments will be whether they are deliverable within Scotland’s fiscal constraints. Initial analysis from the Institute for Fiscal Studies has already raised questions about affordability.

For the bus and coach sector, the detail behind these pledges—and the extent to which they translate into practical, funded policy—will be critical.