Glasgow – Edinburgh high speed rail

With the Executive saying that, in the long term, it wants to examine options for reducing journey times between Edinburgh and Glasgow including looking at new infrastructure and a high speed railway , the time has come to get very clear about what purpose and what wider aims would be served.

And since, from 2010, the two cities will be back to the position of being linked by no fewer than four distinct railway routes, why would there be a need for a fifth, however fast?

The answer is that all of the four existing routes carry commuters from intermediate places into the two cities. In doing so, they preclude frequent and fast non-stop running of express trains over what are, in each case, conventional double track railways. So the fastest time in today’s timetable is 50 minutes via Falkirk or 55 minutes via Carstairs, with several stops en route. The fastest train is managing an average of less than 60 mile/h, so step change systems such as MAGLEV would really have no difficulty in working their magic in bringing travel times between the city centres down to 10-15 minutes. But would the expense and impact of a new system be worthwhile?

The key, of course, is in the nature of the demand pattern between the two cities, and the way in which economic activities are expected to develop. Business to business travel would, of course, be much aided by a dramatic shortening of journey times between the two city centres, which could then truly function as a single economic entity. But the volume of this kind of journey is modest, probably about 200 people/hour in each direction through the day, nowhere near enough to justify substantial investment. It might increase, of course, with a fast connection, but not by an order of magnitude.

A fast link between the two city centres, however, would serve much more than this one travel market, provided there were really good ‘hub’ interchanges in the city centres. Perhaps Haymarket, with the tram, can fulfil this role in Edinburgh, but Glasgow is a tougher proposition with its rail networks split between Central and Queen Street. Somehow, the fast inter city centre connection needs to be recognised as a transformational feature of the central belt’s public transport network, the means by which added value can be provided to services, and a catalyst for enhancements to exiting services, in both great cities. This way the spread of benefit will increase and the prospect of living (anywhere) in one city and being able to work in the other, without adding to the congestion and carbon impact created by increasing car travel, can become a reality. Reduced dependence on the private car, going into the century ahead, is a valuable prize for any economy.

So the first point is: look at fast inter-city connections on a network basis. As a stand-alone, the case is going to be weak. The ability to boost the use of existing and planned public transport (bus, tram, underground and suburban rail), however, is a key benefit that can be sensibly quantified in a project appraisal.

The new science in geographic studies allows us to go further and to compute the economic advantage of bringing the two cities together in a functional sense. The so-called agglomeration benefits would be very substantial. These arise from the simple fact that, with much easier journeys, businesses are able to take advantage of the proximity of other businesses for trading activity, of having more customers within easy reach and of the ability to access a wider labour catchment.

But what would a new link look like, and what could be done in the interim? How would it relate to a north-south high speed link from central Scotland to London in 3 hours, as called for by Tavish Scott at a recent conference , as a complement to a fast link between Edinburgh and Glasgow in 30 minutes?