So Scotland’s transport minister has given his backing to the Glasgow Airport Access Project or GAAP. Well, kinda.
Humza Yousaf is, he has told Holyrood Magazine, committed to the scheme. Or, rather, if you read his words carefully, he is a committed to a scheme.
That is no minor nuance. Mr Yousaf is not so much saying “Mind the GAAP “ as “Mind a GAAP.”
Because the very latest concept of the transit link to Abbotsinch is stopped dead in its tracks.
Council transport planners in Glasgow and Renfrewshire had reckoned they could run trams along the railway from Central Station to Paisley, one of the most clogged lines in Scotland.
These light vehicles would then run on to their own tramway to the airport. The Government’s Transport Scotland quango asked some experts, consultants from Jacobs to look at this. Their verdict? Such a scheme, at a pricetag of £144m, would not just be bad value for money, it would do more economic harm than good.
Sure, Jacobs were not quite so blunt as that summary in their lengthy technical report. But that is the thrust of their findings.
Their logic is straightforward: trams on a direct route from the airport to the city centre would not be very popular. For many passengers the existing bus would be quicker. And most people who travel to the airport regularly - either for work or to catch a plane - don’t live in the city centre. They would still go by car.
Do you want trams carrying very few people delaying trains with hundreds of commuters on board? Probably not. Do you want them taking up sought-after platform slots at Central Station? No. That could prevent key economically vital improvements to the rail network, such as electrifying services to East Kilbride.
Jacobs estimated the economic cost of slower services between Glasgow and Ayrshire and Inverclyde would run in to the millions. And council officials, they said, had not even considered this.
There were those in Clydeside local government who thought the Jacobs report, as damning as it is, would turn in to a pretext to park a rail link up a siding for years.
After, all a previous even more expensive rail link scheme had been promoted by Labour and knocked back by the SNP. Thus even a normally pointy-headed transit issue became weaponised in Scotland’s tribal constitutional politics.
Mr Yousaf’s comments - and similar remarks by the SNP leader of Glasgow City Council, Susan Aitken - suggests a truce is in the air. Labour’s former rail minister, Tom Harris, this weekend also cast huge doubts on the viability of the current scheme. A consensus is quietly emerging that a better option could be worked out.
There is an edge to Mr Yousaf’s remarks, however. GAAP is funded by the City Deal, a pot of cash from both London and Edinburgh. The transport minister suggests there will be no extra money. This raise another issue, if councils were to go ahead with the tram train scheme Jacobs trashes - and it, as expected flopped - who would pick up the the bill? Local authorities. That is a risk they will not want to take.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel