5 July 2013
Inter-City Express newsletter article
We’ve been hard at work this year communicating to Scottish parliamentarians the need for substantial investment in the rail routes to Aberdeen and Inverness if Scotland’s railways are to compete with road journey times. We were pleased to see our ideas being supported by all of the opposition parties in the ‘Transforming Scotland’s Railways’ debate held in the Parliament on 30 May.
Whilst the Government has a number of initiatives to improve railways in the Central Belt, no similar ambition is being shown for routes to the north of Scotland. In this, we agree with the First Minister when he said that “railways must at least compete with roads”. However, with the Government having announced £3bn for the dualling of the A9, and a further £3bn for the dualling of the A96, the Government’s current expenditure focus will lead to the railways becoming less rather than more competitive.
If the lines to the north are to again compete with road journey times we need not only to double-track and electrify these lines, we believe that there is a strong case for reinstatement of the direct rail route between Inverkeithing and Perth. The current fastest journey time from Edinburgh to Perth of 76 minutes, is a full 10 minutes longer than the equivalent time a century ago. Transport Scotland have estimated that such a link would cut around 35 minutes from the journey time.
We were pleased to see that Conservative MSP, Liz Smith, has submitted a parliamentary motion calling for the reinstatement of this line. We are also in discussion with transport minister, Keith Brown, and his civil servants at Transport Scotland regarding the prospects for the re-opening. When the Government has billions of pounds to spend on new road-building, it should certainly be able to find a much smaller volume of investment for a project which would truly transform rail journey times between the Scottish cities.
Our efforts this year have only been the first phase of our campaign. We're going to be working up the second phase of our campaign over the summer.