From the Evening Times:
http://www.eveningtimes.co.uk/lo/features/7020174.html
AFTER 30 years, Glasgow has finally come up with detailed blueprint for
a £187million Crossrail scheme to transform train travel across
Scotland. Chief Reporter DAVID LEASK talks to the people who will
appreciate it most
YOU see them come rain or shine, the unwitting visitors to Glasgow who
discover there is no direct rail link between the city's two main
stations. Every day scores of them have to drag suitcases and shopping
bags up Buchanan Street between Central Station and Queen Street,
joining thousands of locals forced to make the same trip.
All are walking the biggest missing link in Scotland's transport
system, the yawning gap between railway systems north and south of the
Clyde.
And in the rain, it's not nice.
Irish nurses Catherine Burke and Fiona Jordan, from Shannon, found out
the hard way.
Bedraggled and exhausted, they got lost on their walk through Glasgow
city centre on their way from Prestwick Airport to Edinburgh.
Catherine, 26, said: "It's a nightmare having to walk between stations,
especially in the pouring rain.
Pal Fiona, 29, added: "We don't visit Scotland very often but we might
come here more if the journey was made a bit easier."
But their troubles could be near an end.
Today, Strathclyde Passenger Transport officially unveiled a detailed
blueprint for Crossrail, a scheme to link rail networks on either side
of the Clyde that has been on the cards for more than 30 years.
SPT bosses point out all it would take is less than a mile of track.
But their scheme, which is costed at up to £187million, will transform
rail services from Stranraer to Aberdeen.
For the first time ever passengers may be able to travel from Ayr to
Edinburgh, from Paisley to Dundee, without getting off a train.
SPT chairman Alistair Watson argues Crossrail - no longer called
Glasgow Crossrail - is a major national project.
And Mr Watson, a Glasgow city councillor and retired train driver, is
confident the scheme, which is backed in principle by the Scottish
Executive, will become reality.
He said: "Parliamentarians will be nuts if they turn this down.
"I think this is the most strategically important rail initiative in
Scotland."
For a project involving just yards of track, Crossrail really is grand
in scale.
And, as Mr Watson says, it "ticks all the boxes" as far as the
Executive is concerned, helping to get cars off the roads, speeding up
journey times and regenerating some of Glasgow's poorest areas.
The project will involve building three new stations and revamping a
fourth.
Its centrepiece is Glasgow Cross, the city's historic heart and once
one of its busiest railway stations.
SPT aims to turn the A-listed Mercat building at Glasgow Cross into
what the agency's operations manager,
Douglas Ferguson, calls "effectively Glasgow's third station".
Eventually, transport chiefs would like to see Glasgow Cross operate on
two levels. Its old underground station - on the same line as Argyle
Street station - still lies under Trongate.
But for now, they would be happy to see the Mercat transformed into a
"magnificent" station on the old City Union railway line, which curves
past the building on its way from the Gorbals.
The old line - its tracks now mostly used by nothing more than the
occasional diesel dragging empty freight cars - is crucial to
Crossrail.
Under the scheme it will be transformed into one of the main arteries
of the city.
And it could easily be adapted to link north and south.
All it needs is a few hundred yards of track to curve west from Glasgow
Cross past High Street to connect services from south of the river to
Queen Street, Charing Cross and beyond.
It already runs east of High Street to offer the chance of services
from south of the river to Lanarkshire and - if plans for a new
Glasgow-Edinburgh line via Airdrie and Bathgate get the go-ahead - to
the Lothians too.
SPT aims to revamp the rundown High Street station and a new station
would also be created in the Gorbals.
Planners aim to put a new station above the railway arches at Ballater
Street as it crosses one of the city's most vibrant regeneration areas.
And services will be able to run south of the Gorbals to communities as
diverse as Barrhead and East Kilbride thanks to another new stretch of
track - along a viaduct laid out by the Victorians across Laurieston.
But Crossrail will offer more still.
Mr Watson and his team at SPT have long held ambitions to open a new
station at West Street in Tradeston, near the current subway station,
which would create an interchange as big as Partick in the west end.
It would offer connections on the new Crossrail services across the
Clyde to stations like Glasgow Cross, High Street and Queen Street and
beyond.
But the new West Street would also have links to existing lines south
from Central Station and the Subway station.
The West Street station would almost certainly be a stop on the new
Glasgow Airport rail link, scheduled for completion in 2008.
Passengers from Glasgow Airport - and even Prestwick and the Ayrshire
ferries - would be able to get straight on the Subway at West Street.
So what happens next?
The SPT blueprint for Crossrail, officially a technical feasibility
study, will go before its ruling board on October 7. That puts the ball
in the Scottish Executive's court.
The Executive is committed to Crossrail in its partnership agreement of
its ruling Labour and LibDem coalition. But it will almost certainly be
scrutinised carefully.
With the right backing it could be up and running by 2010.
Crossrail could allow dozens of new suburban services and pave the way
for impressive new cross-country services.
But not everybody will be happy. Glasgow cabbies will lose short but
regular fares from Central to Queen Street.
Taxi driver Robert Thomson, from Milton, said: "I can pick up 50 or so
people a week going between Central and Queen Street and, at £2 a time,
I would be nearly £400 out of pocket at the end of the month.
"That would be a nightmare."
THE A-listed Mercat building next to the Trongate would be turned into a
station and help link up rail lines to all parts of the city and beyond
GLASGOW CROSS: The rear interior of the A-listed Mercat building at
Glasgow Cross would be transformed into one of the city's newest stations,
boosting the regeneration of the east end.
GORBALS: A station will be built high on the arches. New track will take
trains to Barrhead, East Kilbride and beyond and the existing City Union
line will go to West Street, Paisley and Glasgow Airport.
HIGH STREET: The rundown station at High Street will become a major
new interchange, with services west to Queen Street and beyond, and east
to Airdrie and, perhaps, Bathgate and Edinburgh.
WEST STREET: A new interchange station would be built next to the
existing Subway, where trains from Glasgow and Prestwick airports,
Renfrewshire, Ayrshire and Inverclyde would stop.
------------------------------------
Taxi driver Robert Thomson, from Milton, said: "I can pick up 50 or so
people a week going between Central and Queen Street and, at £2 a time,
I would be nearly £400 out of pocket at the end of the month.
"That would be a nightmare."
That poor cabbie, eh?
Let's just can the whole idea....
James H