Crossrail link would be bigger benefit to travellers than EGIP
THE Glasgow-Edinburgh electrification (EGIP) with shorter journey times, longer trains and a refurbished Queen Street station is very welcome but offers no meaningful compensation for Transport Scotland’s continued blocking of the long-planned Crossrail link project intended to offer a convenient and competitive rail alternative to car commuting (“Train turmoil for commuters as rail tunnel closure looms”, The Herald, January 13).
The Crossrail project, electrifying 1.8 miles of existing freight line across Glasgow with other short links, would offer direct/no change needed, seamless travel catering for the increasing number of daily journeys increasingly made across the greater Glasgow conurbation and central Scotland. But for the half million residents south of the Clyde in south west Glasgow, Renfrewshire, Inverclyde and Ayrshire, the time-wasting 30-minute break of journey between Central and Queen Street Stations (advised by ScotRail) will still remain the ultimate turn-off to train travel.
Why should those areas continue to be denied very significantly improved rail travel available to north of the Clyde residents in West and East Dunbartonshire, west end and eastern suburbs of Glasgow, which now benefit from fast direct rail travel to Livingston and Edinburgh via the 2011 reopened Airdrie-Bathgate line?
In its current Route Planning Scotland consultation, Network Rail also warns that the 10 minutes rail journey time reduction through EGIP electrification will be largely offset by the near 20 minutes reduction in car journey time that will come on completion of the £508 million M8 extension. Transport Scotland actually boasts this project as even “more ambitious” than the £320m previously planned and, quite extraordinary, against a seven per cent capital cut in Scottish rail investment.
Successive transport/land use studies have repeatedly recommended Crossrail with its good business case and, comfortably satisfying all the Scottish Transport Appraisal Guidance 2 assessment criteria in terms of economic development, shorter journey times, improved network connectivity, modal shift away from car commuting and a major boost to Glasgow’s inn area urban regeneration.
Support for Crossrail has strong cross-party political support at local community and regional level, potentiallyextendingtoScottish Government level if only the Transport Scotland Quango bureaucracy would cease its spuriously negative assertions and mischievously misleading information supplied to Government ministers, effectively cheating Scotland out of a “fit for purpose” rail network.
The case for Glasgow Crossrail with its key interchange stations remains as valid as is today’s Clyde Tunnel, its M8 Kingston Bridge, the new Queensferry Crossing, or Aberdeen’s mega western peripheral by-pass: all specifically intended for the improvement of local and cross-Scotland road journeys. Ken Sutherland, 12A Dirleton Gate, Bearsden. DAVE Stewart renders a public service in publicising better and considerably more comfortable methods of connecting Glasgow and Edinburgh than by using Abellio ScotRail’s third-rate trains (Letters, January 14).
The poor quality of rolling stock operated by Abellio and sanctioned by Transport Scotland is well nigh legendary, and anything is better than the trains Phil Verster recently termed “steel boxes”. He should know – he is boss of what is termed the ScotRail Alliance.
As with Glasgow and Edinburgh, we who travel between Aberdeen and Edinburgh also have a choice – Virgin Trains East Coast. I never tire of relating how pleasant it is to be able to travel first class with legroom, luggage room, two toilets per carriage, and be served drinks and meals at seat, all within a fare that can also prove cheaper than Abellio second class in a poor train on the same route. Gordon Casely, Westerton Cottage, Crathes, Kincardineshire . I READ with interest and some amusement the letter from A Moss (January 14) suggesting a few more weeks of closure and they could widen the existing Queen Street tunnel.
I wonder if any civil engineer could suggest just how long that would actually take? Also is it true that there is a second partial tunnel abandoned on the route? I have heard it suggested elsewhere that there is. Dougie Jardine, 20 Buchlyvie Gardens, Bishopbriggs. THE news that the high-speed link between Edinburgh and Glasgow has been dropped (“SNP ditches plan for inter-cities high-speed bullet train”, The Herald, January 15) is not entirely surprising. This “Scottish cousin” of any, if ever, future extension of HS2 from south of the Border is one of the grandiose schemes I made mention of, tongue in cheek, previously (Letters, January 13). There are others. The Scotland Route Study published by Network Rail in December with a visionary look ahead at rail developments and plans in future decades contains not a few other examples of the wish-list genre. John Macnab, 175 Grahamsdyke Street, Laurieston, Falkirk.