Depending on the response, the final document will show how the train will take the strain through to 2016. The pressures the network is under helped prompt the consultation. More passengers are using the busy inter-urban routes, causing overcrowding on services and, potentially, the track. The strain on infrastructure has been exacerbated by the increasing demands of freight traffic, especially on the Glasgow-Ayrshire routes.

A political will to encourage people to travel by rail rather than road or air merits endorsement and makes compelling the case for looking afresh at the network and how it can best respond. Such exercises invariably throw up losers as well as winners. The Route Utilisation Strategy envisages that perhaps 23 stations could be closed. This will rightly sound alarm bells in rural areas where the train is a lifeline keeping communities going and maintaining livelihoods. Much of the past decade has been spent undoing the harm of the Beeching cuts in the 1960s.

The reopening of the £155m Edinburgh-Tweedbank link, potentially shifting some of the prosperity of our overheating capital city to the Borders, is a case in point. The case for closing a line has to be irresistible, because the damage caused to areas blighted by a wrong decision can take many years to repair, if it can be repaired at all. If, on the other side, the case for keeping a line open does not add up on economic and social grounds, closure is very difficult to resist; particularly if pain somewhere means gain for a much greater number elsewhere.

The strategy sets out options for improving the network, and the lot of the passenger, from Inverness through Glasgow, Edinburgh and the central belt, to Ayrshire, at a cost of £1.4bn. However, £1.1bn has already been earmarked for four major projects, suggesting that every penny will have to be squeezed out of the remainder to reach the destinations identified. Even if this can be achieved (and it is a big ask) it will not mean the strategy has all the answers for Scotland's rail network.

The biggest loser is the largely-ignored Crossrail scheme which would link suburban networks north and south of the River Clyde in Glasgow with the rest of Scotland and, potentially, Glasgow Airport through Queen Street station. If the Scottish Executive is genuinely committed to developing an integrated, national rail network, the scheme, first mooted nearly 40 years ago, should be at the core of the document. Instead, it has been shunted into the sidings alongside other "potential enhancement schemes". This is a major disappointment. If Ministers are serious about reducing the alarming growth in road traffic volume, with all the misery and environmental damage that entails, linking the north and south of Scotland's biggest city by rail is exactly the type of imaginative project that should be embraced. Responses, please.

See also:
 

Network Rail’s omission of Glasgow Crossrail is staggering

Letters: August 28 2006

YOUR Friday leader, Future of our railways, forms an excellent, balanced assessment of Network Rail's outline of development submissions to the Scottish Executive; I invite readers to peruse further details from Network Rail directly.

Network Rail's omission of the Glasgow Crossrail proposal in an otherwise well-grounded survey is staggering, as, of all outstanding schemes, this is the one of cardinal importance, and its urgency rating highest. Various other solutions to the faultline running through the heart of Scotland's rail network have been suggested, such as reopening the Finnieston tunnel, or, at massive expense, excavating a direct underground line between Central and Queen Street high-level stations, whereas adopting the Crossrail proposals achieves all the benefits and more at a fraction of the cost. That imperative includes not only valuable new commuter services, but also efficient routes between south-west, central and north-east Scotland.

Failure to complete the link also effectively sabotages Glasgow Airport's hub status by denying it convenient through journeys to anywhere but the southern suburban rail network. Network Rail cannot simply feign blindness to these well-known issues.

The onus and final decisions lie, of course, with the Scottish Executive, and it remains to be seen whether it studies the interests of the whole country when ordering precisely how the railways are developed. The resources available should be more than adequate for all the other planned action if the preposterous proposal to build a mainline station under Edinburgh Airport terminal is categorically rejected as baleful, rather than beneficial, to the economy of the nation as a whole. Or is this to be another "reserved powers" issue, upon which, conveniently, Westminster will know better than we do?
Andrew W Heatlie, 109 Hyndland Road, Glasgow.
 
YOUR editorial, Future of our railways (August 25), quite rightly points out the untold damage, especially to rural communities, done by the Beeching rail cuts in the 1960s. RMT would also agree that Crossrail has been on the back-burner for far too long already. Never has the need for joined-up thinking on transport been clearer. The environment and the economy are crying out for massive reductions in emissions and road congestion, and yet once more the shadow of the axe has appeared over rural railway services.

Scotland's rail network should be viewed as an integrated national whole, with every part playing a growing role in getting people out of their cars and on to public transport.

Isolating individual rail services on the basis of profitability misses this essential point and underlines the need to reclaim public transport as a public service in the public sector.

Those motivated by the blunt instrument of profit-making shudder at the thought of using revenues from heavily used inter-city and commuter services to maintain and promote lifeline services. If rail lines, stations or services are under-used the question should not be whether to close them, but how to get people on to them. The downward spiral must be broken.
Bob Crow, General Secretary, RMT, 39 Chalton Street, London.
 
I WRITE in response to your article, £1.4bn rail plan to boost commuters, and your supporting leader. You rightly say that the review of Scotland's railway, being led by Network Rail, sets out options for improving the network and the lot of the passenger – station closures, however, are not on the agenda.

The Route Utilisation Strategy that is being co-ordinated by Network Rail has no plans or powers to close stations; it is a factual review of the railway – including station use. Many stations in Scotland are lightly used; this does not imply a threat of closure; on the contrary, it often underlines the important role played by the railway in connecting rural communities, especially in Highlands.

Far from advocating closure of stations, the trend in Scotland is for growing the railway. Since 1978, 64 stations have opened in Scotland – 13 of these in the past 10 years – while four have closed, the last one at Errol in 1985. More than 90% of Scotland's trains have run on time for the past seven months, our railway is enjoying record levels of investment by Network Rail and third parties and this cross-industry review presents more than 40 options for accommodating forecast growth of 30% in the next 10 years.
David Simpson, Network Rail Route Director, 58 Port Dundas Road, Glasgow.
 
Network Rail's threat to 23 rural railway stations overlooks the importance of maintaining public transport for residents and tourists in the Highlands. The proposed rail developments in the central belt are very welcome. But closure of local stations on rural routes such as the West Highland, Kyle and Far North lines would save very little time or money, particularly as some of the stations are request stops, and at others the signalling system requires trains to stop in the passing loop even if no passengers are waiting.

West Highland trains go through Scotland's first national park, and pass mountains and lochs of world- renowned beauty. Oban and Fort William are among the most popular tourist destinations in Scotland, and important economic centres for the west Highlands. The Fort William-Mallaig line has gained worldwide publicity through the Harry Potter films and Jacobite steam train.

Based on a rail economic assessment, rural railways do not perform well. But a wider view of the economic importance to the tourist industry as Scotland's biggest employer shows these railways are valuable tourist attractions with worldwide appeal. Network Rail, Transport Scotland and First ScotRail should recognise the opportunity to develop the West Highland lines as an important part of the local transport infrastructure. There is a large market for day trips and short breaks from the central belt which could be more fully exploited.
Dr John McCormick, Friends of the West Highland Lines, Doonerak, Glenfinnan, Invernessshire.