Crossrail Glasgow

Crossrail Glasgow (formerly known as Glasgow Crossrail) is a proposed railway development in Central Scotland to connect the stations Glasgow Central and Queen Street.[1][2] It has been estimated at a cost of £200 million.[2][3]

Crossrail Glasgow
Proposed route
North Clyde Line including Airdrie–Bathgate link Bellgrove City Union Line and Argyle Line High Street Curve to north and east   High Street (relocated) to West Coast Main Line Glasgow Cross (new) Glasgow Cross (Argyle) River Clyde Glasgow South Western Line to the South via Kilmarnock Queen Street (Low Level) Gorbals (new) Central Station (High Level) Charing Cross Glasgow South Western Line to the South via Kilmarnock Glasgow Subway anticlockwise and Cathcart Circle Lines   West Street (Subway) West Street (new) Turnback facility Glasgow Subway clockwise Finnieston Junction City Union Line North Clyde Line and Argyle Line Shields Junction Paisley Canal line Ayrshire Coast Line and Inverclyde Line

Since the 1970s, it has been widely recognised that one of the main weaknesses of the railway network in Greater Glasgow is that rail services from the South (which would normally terminate at Central main line station) cannot bypass Glasgow city centre and join the northern railway network which terminates at Glasgow Queen Street station, and vice versa for trains coming from the North. At present rail users who wish to travel across Glasgow have to disembark at either Central or Queen Street and traverse the city centre by foot, or by road.

Proposal

The proposed Crossrail initiative involves electrifying and reopening the City Union Line for regular passenger use in conjunction with new filler sections of track which will connect the North Clyde, Ayrshire, and Kilmarnock and East Kilbride suburban routes together, therefore allowing running of services through the centre of Glasgow in a North-South axis. The Glasgow Airport Rail Link that was to have directly connected Glasgow Airport to the rest of the Scottish rail network (including the Airdrie to Bathgate Link to Edinburgh) was cancelled in 2009.

The development would also include a number of new (or redeveloped) stations:

• High Street Station on the North Clyde Line would be demolished and relocated.
• A new station will be built at Glasgow Cross, behind the Mercat Building, potentially providing an interchange with the Argyle Line services that run under the street below (this was previously the site of Gallowgate railway station prior to the union line's closure to passengers).
• The reopening of Cumberland Street been proposed in the Gorbals, opening the area up to the passenger railway network for the first time since the 1960s.
• West Street subway station would be expanded and remodelled so as to provide a major interchange between the railway network and the Glasgow Subway, similar to the Partick station upgrades and renovations completed in 2013.

In conjunction with the core proposals, other possible developments of Crossrail may include:

• The construction of a chord over the former Gushetfaulds railfreight terminal to link Crossrail with the West Coast Main Line (WCML), thereby creating a new path for WCML express services to access the north of Scotland network. An overbridge was provided at Strathbungo as part of the M74 Extension to allow this in the future. [4]
• The reopening of Glasgow Cross Low Level station to provide interchange to the Argyle Line.
• Turnback facility in the Yorkhill/Kelvinhaugh area for trains on the North Clyde line from the east, before reaching the already overloaded Finnieston Junction and congested tracks to the west.

Developments

The project has been in limbo for decades.[5] The scheme has been heavily pushed by Strathclyde Partnership for Transport (SPT) for many years and a £500,000 study was commissioned by the Scottish Executive in 2003 to investigate the feasibility and costs of the link.[6] The outcome of this was published in 2005, with funding and Government approval pending. However, the scheme was once again omitted from a review published by Network Rail and Transport Scotland in the summer of 2006, suggesting that any chances of the scheme becoming a reality still largely uncertain. The Route Utilisation Strategy for Scotland, published in March 2007, again omitted the Glasgow Crossrail scheme from its recommendations.

The Scottish Government's Strategic Transport Projects Review (STPR), published in December 2008, included a Glasgow Crossrail-type solution as part of its wider West of Scotland Strategic Rail Enhancement project, one in a list of 29 projects to be taken forward as a priority in the following 20 years. Though Transport Scotland has never given formal commitment to the project as it hasn't been included in their list of future investments.[1] In December 2017, Edinburgh-based think tank Reform Scotland voiced support of regional projects like Crossrail Glasgow in a published report to improve journey times around Scotland.[7] [8]

The Scottish Labour leader at the time Jim Murphy supported the project and said they would build it if they were to win the 2016 Scottish Parliament election.[2][3] Scottish Green Party have been consistently in favour of the project,[5] in 2017 MSP Mark Ruskell had voiced support the re-opening of the line to as a means of reducing congestion in the city area.[9]

References

1. Gillian Loney (10 March 2017). "Campaigners call for Crossrail to make travel between north and south of Glasgow easier". Glasgow Live. Retrieved 6 September 2017.
2. Chris McCall (13 October 2015). "Glasgow Crossrail: Will the 'missing link' be built?". The Scotsman.
3. "Scottish Labour commits to funding of Glasgow Crossrail scheme". BBC. 9 February 2015. Retrieved 6 September 2017.
4. https://www.flickr.com/photos/transportscotland/5415185243/in/photostream/
5. Patrick Harvie (23 February 2015). "Patrick Harvie: Glasgow needs Crossrail and should welcome any genuine support to make it a reality". Daily Record. Retrieved 20 September 2017.
6. ""THE CITY TRACKS", Glasgow Magazine, February 2004" (PDF). Retrieved 28 November 2007.
7. Stewart Paterson (27 December 2017). "Put local rail services ahead of high speed links to London says think tank". Evening Times. Retrieved 20 January 2018.
8. Phillip Gates (27 December 2017). "ScotRail nationalisation 'a meaningless distraction'". insider.co.uk. Retrieved 20 January 2018.
9. Mark Ruskell (15 September 2017). "Mark Ruskell: Greener, fairer travel? We still have a mountain to climb". The National. Retrieved 20 September 2017.