An integrated bus and rail strategy will be published at the start of the next financial year, Infrastructure Minister Ray Harmer MHK has pledged.

He told Tynwald last week that the strategy was being drafted.

In line with a government study commissioned to look into the ’deficiencies of the island’s bus service’, he said, a committee would help him in ’determining the overall strategic vision for both bus and rail’.

If the committee endorses the department’s strategy, the aim would be publish it at the start of the 2019-20 financial year.