Crossrail Glasgow is a proposed railway development in CentralScotland to connect the stations Glasgow Central and Queen Street. It has been estimated at a cost of £200 million. 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 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 was cancelled in 2009. The development would also include a number of new stations:
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.
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, 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.
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. The scheme has been heavily pushed by Strathclyde Partnership for Transport 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. 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 Scotlandin 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, 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. 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. 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. Scottish Green Party have been consistently in favour of the project, in 2017 MSPMark Ruskell had voiced support the re-opening of the line to as a means of reducing congestion in the city area.
