Glasgow Crossrail
Long-mooted plans to transform Glasgow’s transport system via a cross-city rail link continue to divide opinion. ANDREW MOURANT reports on the current state of affairs
RAIL delivers a progress report on the battle being fought in Glasgow to prevent potential rail land being permanently lost.
Alast-ditch battle is being fought to protect a corridor of land which campaigners say is vital to any crosscity rail project in Glasgow. It lies in a redevelopment area at the city centre’s eastern edge, but soon it could be built over and the chance to build an important component of any future scheme lost for good. If that happens, rail groups say that the idea of Crossrail Glasgow, first conceived around 50 years ago, will suffer a severe blow.
The land, on the site of an old goods yard at College Street currently used as a car park, could be used to create a short link to Queen Street station that would enhance cross-city and national rail links.
Plans for Crossrail have had a chequered history, and have long divided opinion. They centre on upgrading and electrifying the 1.8mile City Union Line (still used by freight), and joining the two halves of Scotland’s rail network for passenger services.
City Union, which straddles the River Clyde east of the city centre, connects at its northern end to Edinburgh services at Sighthill Junction, and at its southerly point (Shields Junction) to the Paisley line.
When costed in 2005, figures for building Crossrail came in at between £115 million and £ 250m - a huge variable explained in part by the need to acquire expensive land. A new station at Glasgow Cross would provide scope for an interchange with the Argyle Line which runs below. And a High Street Curve peeling off the City Union Line would provide a link to Queen Street, the city’s northern terminus.
However, Crossrail has gradually been squeezed out of various planning policies. Critics say there are better ways of improving transport in and around greater Glasgow, home to the country’s biggest suburban rail network after London.
Shortly after it was formed in 2006 and had acquired responsibilities from the former Strathclyde Passenger Transport Authority, Transport Scotland (the government agency in charge of transport policy) did produce a planning project review that included Crossrail. But it subsequently dropped the scheme from its list of priorities.
Stewart Leighton, a retired Glasgow City Council planning officer and member of the campaign group Railfuture Scotland, is among the pro-Crossrail voices. He says it has “vast potential for connectivity, not just across the city but across Scotland”, and tells RAIL that when land was sold by the council without protecting the route of a High Street Curve, he was “pretty angry”.
The site has since been taken over by developer Get Living, which (through real estate and investment management firm JLL) has submitted plans to build retail, leisure and business facilities, residential property to let, and student accommodation on a 17-acre site.
However, Railfuture Scotland believes that building over the line of a High Street Curve would result in the “irreversible destruction of potentially valuable and much-needed upgrading/modernisation… to provide full interconnection of the current disjointed rail network”.
Yet none of this will be publicly debated by the council’s planning committee when Get Living’s scheme is considered. RAIL has learned that because there were fewer than six objections when it was open for consultation, the application will be determined by a planning officer under delegated powers - possibly in the late spring, according to a city council spokesman.
Labour MP Paul Sweeney, in whose Glasgow North East constituency part of the route lies, has made a formal objection to the plans. He wants changes made to them, so that land along the High Street Curve route isn’t built on.
The scheme’s architect is Paul Stallan. When working for the previous site owner, Stallan devised two plans - one for buildings that would have covered the route, and one that left it free. But that was before a formal commitment to Crossrail was abandoned by the council - after pressure (campaigners say) from Transport Scotland. It left the High Street Curve route, long statutorily unprotected, more vulnerable than ever.
When asked by RAIL if he had raised the High Street Curve issue with his client, Stallan declined to comment, other than to stress that “no requirement” exists to protect the land in question.
Meanwhile, Leighton rues the fact that Railfuture never got the chance to plead its case for keeping the route building-free. “We were hoping for the opportunity to explain things - perhaps suggest they phase in the
development… and not necessarily build on that land,” he says.
Yet Sweeney believes there is still a case to be made via Glasgow’s city development plan (CDP). “I believe that the application… contravenes sustainable transport objectives… highlighting the safeguarding of new stations, at Glasgow Cross (to serve this quarter of the City Centre and for potential interchange with the Argyle line),” he wrote.
He argues that the policy “safeguards former rail formations with a reasonable prospect for reuse for transport”, and that the plans, as they stand, “by impeding the possibility of the High Street Curve… nullify the purpose of the potential Glasgow Crossrail scheme and a Glasgow Cross station specifically mentioned in the CDP.”
Sweeney recognises that fighting to keep the land free and to advance this cause is a complex business. It would involve Network Rail (responsible for rail infrastructure), besides dealing with various bodies responsible for planning and funding - an interaction that is “one of the major hurdles” in keeping the proposal open.
He has written to NR (although Crossrail Glasgow doesn’t feature in NR’s Scotland Route Study), and to Strathclyde Partnership for Transport (SPT) “to ascertain where we’re at with protection of the project viability at present”.
SPT, which covers greater Glasgow, was formed in 2006 alongside the reorganisation that created Transport Scotland. SPT still claims a role in “planning and delivering transport…across the region….analysing travel needs and developing the transport system for now and the future.”
A decade ago, SPT was pushing the business case for Crossrail - which, at the time, featured in Network Rail’s Route Utilisation Strategy as a proposed third party scheme (with SPT as its main promoter). SPT saw Crossrail as key to serving regeneration areas “at relatively modest cost” while significantly increasing cross-Glasgow capacity and that of radial routes into the city.
But what clout – if any – does SPT actually have these days regarding Crossrail
I remain of the view that it isn’t a particularly useful project. It is effectively a rail bypass of Glasgow City Centre, and the paths the trains would use would be much better reinforcing the core radial train service. Iain Docherty, Professor of Public Policy and Governance, Glasgow University
There’s no need to obliterate the possibility of the High Street Curve to achieve housing development. It would appear to be a strategic error - increasing the population travel amenity demand, while suppressing a future potential means by which to meet it. Paul Sweeney, Glasgow North East MP
Glasgow? According to its spokesman, the government leads on national strategy, SPT on regional. “We are not subordinate,” she says. “We’re a separate organisation, but work very closely with Scottish Government and Transport Scotland, and we have a major role in shaping policy.
“Any plans to progress Crossrail will be considered as part of the new national and regional transport strategies. SPT is fully supportive of any improvements to cross-city and cross-region transport connections, and will continue to work with partners to deliver appropriate solutions.”
Campaigners say a line along the curve would deliver extra rail track capacity for doubling East Kilbride/BarrheadKilmarnock services. Moreover, it would allow some trains to be diverted from Glasgow Central High Level, often stretched to full capacity, and into Queen Street Low Level.
“There’s no need to obliterate the possibility of the High Street Curve to achieve housing development,” says Sweeney.
“It would appear to be a strategic error - increasing the population travel amenity demand, while suppressing a future potential means by which to meet it.”
Yet the value of a High Street Curve has long been contentious.
Even consultant Faber Maunsell, whose report a decade ago strongly favoured Crossrail and considered it as the chance to link over 220 stations by direct services, felt the curve’s cost benefits were limited. Faber Maunsell’s preferred solution was instead to upgrade the City Union Line, giving a regular passenger link between Edinburgh and Ayr, and to create new stations at Glasgow Cross, Gorbals and West Street.
Much has changed in Glasgow (and on the network) since then. Regeneration of the city’s East End, of which Get Living’s scheme is one component, is moving apace. And campaigners believe it is this that makes the case for Crossrail Glasgow (High Street Curve included) all the more compelling.
They believe that stations at High Street and Glasgow Cross would serve Strathclyde University and City Science District, while a proposed station at Gorbals would serve Glasgow College southern campus. And a new one at West Street would interchange with the Subway (underground), offering greater access to Glasgow University from south of the River Clyde.
However, supporters of Crossrail Glasgow have had little to cling to lately. And political
change, which began three years ago with Scottish Labour’s rout in the 2015 General Election and the resignation of Scottish Labour’s pro-Crossrail leader Jim Murphy, has not helped them.
Last year, after 37 years of Labour control, the Scottish National Party (SNP) became the largest party on Glasgow City Council. Crossrail Glasgow had been Labour policy, but pro-Crossrail lobbyists have long claimed SNP indifference (outright hostility, even) towards their ambitions, accusing the nationalists of favouring road over rail.
They also claim that Transport Scotland wields too much power.
But according to Iain Docherty, professor of public policy and governance at Glasgow University, and a non-executive director of TS from 2006-10, doubts surrounded the Crossrail Glasgow concept long before TS was created. “Strathclyde Regional Council [SRC], when it was the Passenger Transport Authority, commissioned work in the 1980s and 1990s which was equivocal about the benefits of the project,” he tells RAIL.
“There has been considerable controversy over the decades about the feasibility of the High Street Chord - its operational impacts on existing services, and whether or not to move High Street station as part of the project.”
Also in question, according to Docherty, was “the sense in having trains using the City Union Line only to turn back at Finnieston or Kelvinhaugh”. This would require further new infrastructure because there is insufficient capacity through PartickHyndland to run them further west, thereby again reducing the potential capacity of the train service via Queen Street Low Level. “In general terms, many politicians were keen to add it to the list of rail reopenings achieved by SRC, but many professional officers were dubious about its benefits and/or potential knock-on effects,” he says.
Docherty, currently a non-executive director of ScotRail, says he did not advise against Crossrail during his time with Transport Scotland.
“That was not my role. However, I remain of the view that it isn’t a particularly useful project. It is effectively a rail bypass of Glasgow City Centre, and the paths the trains would use would be much better reinforcing the core radial train service.
“Crossrail was one of the many hundreds of projects examined by TS in the 2000s. There was extensive consultation and analysis. TS chose not to take it forward because it considered other alternatives to increase rail capacity in Glasgow performed better.
“TS is part of government and therefore bureaucratic by definition, but my experience of people accusing it of being ‘unaccountable’ is what they really mean is ‘they don’t like my pet project’.
“As to the wider issue of cross-Glasgow rail connectivity, I remain of the view that the best way to do this, despite the expense, would be the North-South tunnel proposal, also investigated by SPT and retained by TS as a future option when current smaller capacity enhancement projects are exhausted.”
But pro-rail campaigners see things differently. For example, with new development around east Glasgow, more travellers (not least Strathclyde University students) would naturally choose to travel to a new station at Glasgow Cross on the site of the Mercat Building. They point out that it would be closer than Central station to Marks and Spencer in Argyle Street.
“Crossrail should be considered as part of the plan to ease recognised congestion at Glasgow Central,” they say.
City Union Line - “the live railway at the heart of Crossrail” and still used by heavy freight and passenger excursion trains - has no known structural problems, they add.
Sweeney is part of Get Glasgow Moving, a group that is trying to promote an integrated transport system within the city.
“At the moment it’s fragmented and deregulated,” he says. “The city centre has expanded outwards, and modelling suggests that a station at Glasgow Cross could become Scotland’s fourth busiest. Crossrail would regenerate the Gorbals, too - it’s a no-brainer, a huge opportunity.”