IT was fantastic news this week to hear that Green MSPs have won free bus travel for all under-19s across Scotland.

For young people this means freedom. Freedom to get to things that would have been impossibly expensive otherwise.

Freedom to meet friends from different parts of the city. Freedom to broaden your horizons, maybe going through to the Fringe in the summer or an amazing gig.

Freedom to not have to spend your hard-earned cash from your minimum-wage job on getting home safely. Even the freedom to be able to get a bus instead of trudging through the rain.

When I was 18 I spent most of my time on Glasgow buses, going between three different jobs and between my mum’s, my dad’s and my boyfriend’s.

Free travel would have saved so much money I probably could have quit one of the jobs!

For families, this is a transformational step, making it easier to afford journeys to appointments or days out.

The cost of school holidays mounts up – this will open up more options of places to go for free.

Everyday, it makes taking the bus a better option, which is better for our planet as well as our pockets.

READ MORE: 'Free bus travel for Under 18s' in Scotland as SNP and Greens reach Budget deal

For Greens, this is a big step towards our vision of free public transport for everyone.

Of course there’s a long way to go – we know the bus service we have in Glasgow is too expensive, too unreliable and misses out too many of our communities.

We want buses in public hands like the public services they are; running for people, not shareholders. Greens won the powers for councils to run their own services in the Transport Bill, and councils like ours need to explore how we do that. Meanwhile, making bus travel free for young people is an amazing leap in the right direction.

More good news from the Green budget agreement at Holyrood is that £95 million extra has been won for local government. That is £10.6m extra funding for Glasgow, which will mean we can reverse some of the worst cuts that the SNP proposed last week.

We should be easing pressure on our hardest-stretched services like education and social care. And while last week’s Glasgow budget already protected education services like teacher numbers

– unlike the Labour budget proposal – it contained really tough choices.

Last year, Green councillors put a million pounds in our budget plans towards refurbishing Blairvadach Outdoor Education Centre, but this year the SNP’s draft budget at Holyrood forced a choice between that and other vital services.

Now, Green MSPs have won us the funds to save it from closure. Outdoor and residential education is so important.

Now with the extra money for our city, the centre must be saved from immediate closure, and we’re also calling for a review into a sustainable future for the centre, so it can operate on a sound footing going forward.

Let’s make sure all of Glasgow’s kids keep getting access to experiences that take their breath away.