Minister slams Glasgow Airport rail link plan
16.03.10
Building a railway line to connect Glasgow Airport to the city centre would have provided minimal benefit to Scotland’s economy and have virtually no impact on cutting traffic or greenhouse gas emissions, Scotland’s Transport Minister told the Herald. In his sharpest criticism of the Glasgow Airport Rail Link since it was controversially axed, Stewart Stevenson said its business case no longer stacked up.
Mr Stevenson told the Herald that cancelling the airport rail link was necessary to help protect £2 billion of investment in rail projects that directly benefit Glasgow. He said: ‘If you look at the effect on traffic, it would see a reduction at junction 28 of the M8 of 21 vehicles in the peak hour by 2030. If that doesn’t tell you something about the nature of that project, I don’t know what does. Whereas with other [rail investment] projects it’s much clearer there’s a substantial economic benefit.'
‘Equally, one of the questions I’ve also been asked… is who would have contributed to the project. And the answer is nobody would. The sole investment elsewhere was that Glasgow Airport would provide the pedestrian link from the station to the terminal. And that was it, because the airlines and even the Chambers of Commerce at the time didn’t feel the case was such that they would promote investment from anywhere.’
Add to: del.icio.us | Digg it | Newsvine | NowPublic | Reddit
To book a glasgow airport hotel or glasgow airport car park at the lowest price, click on these links to two great glasgow airport car parking and glasgow airport hotel price comparison pages.
