Air passengers at Wick, Stornoway and Kirkwall will benefit from improved airport facilities. We will establish a National Transport Timetable system by December 2000. We want to encourage more people to travel by rail. To increase the recent growth in passenger numbers we will provide the strategic direction for Scottish passenger rail services and from next year we will take on financial responsibility for the Scottish franchise. New investment in Scotland's railways will lead to faster, more frequent and more comfortable trains.
Scottish passengers deserve no less.
We will allocate additional funds to the Freight Facilities Grants to transfer more freight from our roads. We will meet our Programme for Government target of 15 million lorry miles transferred off Scottish roads each year by 2002 and will build significantly on that total by 2004. We will increase expenditure on concessionary fares to reduce the cost of off peak bus travel. We will increase the Public Transport Fund over the 3 years to 31 March 2004. Distribution of the fund will focus on measures that contribute most to congestion relief.