Fury over the cost of preparing for doomed city airport rail link
Monday, 7th June 2010
As published in the Evening Times on 7th June 2010
By Stewart Paterson
Bosses are going back to the drawing board to improve transport links to Glasgow Airport – as it was revealed the cost of the planned rail link scheme being cancelled had risen to more than £40million.
Airport owner BAA is carrying out a Strategic Transport Network Study after the decision last year by Finance Secretary John Swinney to shelve the £170m project forced it to rip up its original Surface Access Strategy.
Officials from Glasgow and Renfrewshire councils and Transport Scotland have been asked for their opinion on how to improve public transport links to and from the airport, without the rail link.
It comes as it was revealed over £40m had been wasted preparing for the rail link, prompting one MSP to accuse Mr Swinney of “breathtaking incompetence”.
The true cost of the cancellation was admitted by Scottish Transport Minister Stewart Stevenson after Paisley North MSP Wendy Alexander asked for details.
Mr Stevenson revealed £30.4m had already been spent and another £2.7m has still to be paid. It includes:
- £19m on branch line work carried out before the cancellation decision last September.
- £7.6m for combined work on the Glasgow-Paisley main line and branch line.
- £4m already paid for land, legal and consultant costs.
- £2.75m for more land and legal costs to close the project.
- The figures do not include VAT, which would probably add another £5m to the total, and also the £3m cost of the original Bill to allow work to proceed.
The rail link was estimated by independent analysts to be worth £300m to the west Scotland economy and would have helped generate 1300 jobs.
Ms Alexander said: “SNP ministers have now admitted their decision to cancel the Glasgow Airport Rail Link has cost £40m. This is a disgraceful waste of public money.
“Most other European countries have direct rail links from their airports. We badly need this investment to make our transport system fit for the 21st century and improve Scotland’s attractiveness as a place to do business.
“A large part of the work on the project had already been completed and the rail link would have created an additional 1300 jobs in west Scotland.
“I believe jobs and the economy should be the Scottish Government’s biggest priority just now. Instead, the Finance Secretary John Swinney has chosen to waste huge amounts of taxpayers’ money winding the project up.
“His incompetence and misguided priorities are breathtaking.”
The original plan was for trains to run from Glasgow Central to Paisley Gilmour Street and then St James stations, before branching off to a new purpose-built 1.2mile line that would have taken it over the M8 into a new airport station.
The cost of the route was originally estimated at £170m, but Mr Swinney said the project had to be shelved because of necessary public spending cuts.
Ms Alexander was one of the MSPs who put forward alternatives.
She had wanted Mr Swinney to use the £82m the Scottish Government received from the previous Chancellor, Alistair Darling, in a spending review to fund the rail link’s first years.
The rail link was the centrepiece of a package of measures being developed to cope with the expected increase in airport passengers in the short and long term.