SCOTRAIL’S claim that total transformation of Scotland’s railway will be achieved by 2019 is misleading without a government commitment to complete Scotland’s missing link, easily achieved by upgrading/electrification of 1.8 miles of Glasgow’s City Union Line, already confirmed as a good business case that satisfies all of the required assessment criteria.
Transport Scotland’s hostility to this Crossrail modernisation project denies Scotland the economic, social and environmental benefits of a more convenient and competitive ScotRail network.
Electrification of the main Glasgow-Edinburgh line will achieve a marginal speed-up but no substitute for a Crossrail link, which would remove the travel barrier imposed of the half-hour break of journey inconvenience between Glasgow’s Central and Queen Street stations. ScotRail’s flagship line is facing a competitive hit, likely to be inflicted after opening of the £500 million central Scotland motorway extensions with a 20 minutes reduction in Glasgow-Edinburgh journey times.
In the absence of a modernised Crossrail network the inevitable lure of faster motorway commuting across Scotland will be hard to resist compared against the frustrating disconnect associated with ScotRail’s disjointed networks.
A clear commitment from the Transport Minister, authorising Crossrail Stage 1, costing less than one-tenth of the present mega motorway projects, remains a pre-requisite to achieving a totally transformed ScotRail network by 2019.
Ken Sutherland,
12A Dirleton Gate, Bearsden.
I FEAR it is not just feeder roads to the new Forth Bridge that will cause bottlenecks (Letters, March 30). The existing bridge will be for public transport vehicles which might account for 10-15 per cent of traffic, leaving the new bridge to cater for 85-90 per cent of traffic at today’s levels: little headroom for growth.
It appears access from the A90 Queensferry Road to the existing bridge will be a convoluted route and will be for public transport vehicles only; also, there will be no straightforward access from the southern M90 (M9 link) motorway to the existing bridge for public transport or other vehicles. I fear the feeder road congestion in normal operating mode will be nothing to the congestion if the new bridge has to be closed at any point and all traffic has to use the existing bridge.
Scott Macintosh
4 Alder Crescent, Killearn.
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