Expansions for Scotland's rail network proposed

[najaB]

Its not for enhancements work, just run of the mill renewals.

Probably 95% renewals, with small enhancement works making up the rest. E.g. replacing turnouts with higher-speed ones.

 

[och aye]

An opinion piece regarding reopening the Edinburgh South Sub:

Here’s the case for reopening Edinburgh’s lost circle line

https://www.citymetric.com/transport/here-s-case-reopening-edinburgh-s-lost-circle-line-4377

In political terms, the ESSR is one of those ideas that is talked about every few years and then forgotten about, much like the second circle of the Glasgow subway. In 2004, transport planners were commissioned to investigate the case for re-opening the line. Despite finding that upgrading the railway and adding new stations would cost under £30m, and that the benefit-cost ratio would be 1.64, higher than the 1.01 for the Borders Railway, the report stated a business case was not found.

And yet, £776m was spent on Edinburgh's trams. Even factoring in inflation, the cost of a re-opened ESSR pales in significance.

In 2016, the managing director of the Scotrail Alliance, Phil Versters, spoke in favour of re-opening the ESSR, albeit with the caveat that tram-trains be used instead of heavy rail. This would allow the line to connect with the trams at Haymarket, and then travel along Princes Street, thus avoiding the challenge of running more trains through Waverley, already Scotland's second busiest station after Glasgow Central. The Sheffield-Rotherham Tram-Train is the first example of this concept in the UK although there are other successful cases across Europe. However, it would necessitate further tram work east of Princes Street in order to avoid Waverley.

 

[najaB]

An opinion piece regarding reopening the Edinburgh South Sub

The South-sub is one of those things that makes a load of sense until you start looking at the details. Then it just makes some sense - not saying it's a bad idea though.

 

[Ginaro]

Question is how do you get the tram from Princes Street to the south sub if you want to avoid Haymarket. Would it be feasible to take the tram via Lothian Road, and onto the old alignment at the West Approach Road, bulldoze half a dozen houses at Angle Park Terrace, then continue over the railway and turn to join the south sub?

 

[433N]

I wish I heard more about plans to serve the huge area to the south/southwest of the city which currently has no rail at all.

Unsurprisingly, the city bypass in this region has 3 of the top 10 spots for traffic congestion in the UK and nothing is ever done to alleviate it.

 

[Mordac]

I wish I heard more about plans to serve the huge area to the south/southwest of the city which currently has no rail at all.

Unsurprisingly, the city bypass in this region has 3 of the top 10 spots for traffic congestion in the UK and nothing is ever done to alleviate it.

A while ago there was a project being developed to grade separate Sheriffhall Roundabout. I lost track when I moved away from Edinburgh. Has the BANANA* lobby put a stop to that?


*BANANA = Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything

 

[gingertom]

Question is how do you get the tram from Princes Street to the south sub if you want to avoid Haymarket. Would it be feasible to take the tram via Lothian Road, and onto the old alignment at the West Approach Road, bulldoze half a dozen houses at Angle Park Terrace, then continue over the railway and turn to join the south sub?

I'd be looking to take the tram lines up over the main lines, interchange just west of Haymarket then head north over the old trackbed towards Granton, to link up with the planned Newhaven extension. Ticks many boxes.

 

[railjock]

I'd be looking to take the tram lines up over the main lines, interchange just west of Haymarket then head north over the old trackbed towards Granton, to link up with the planned Newhaven extension. Ticks many boxes.

Interesting idea for the West end though I think the question was more for the East end.

You could build an interchange stop at Brunstane with the line then going over the ECML and taking the Leith Docks route down to meet the proposed New tram line in Leith somewhere. All pie in the sky of course.

 

[najaB]

Interesting idea for the West end though I think the question was more for the East end.

Is there room to go down Distillery Lane with a stop that aligns with the current footbridge, then behind the houses at Easter Dalry Place, over the line to Carstairs, along Sauchiebank, Russel Road, behind the industrial units and then join the Sub just past the existing mainline junction?

 

[Photohunter71]

It would be best if they just used dmu's bi-mode, emu's for passenger use on the sub, You're also competing with freight and engineers trains along the sub, besides, there's very little room for placing street-trains alongside the sub. I take it the current street-trains use a smaller gauge track in comparison to normal trains?

 

[Ginaro]

I'd be looking to take the tram lines up over the main lines, interchange just west of Haymarket then head north over the old trackbed towards Granton, to link up with the planned Newhaven extension. Ticks many boxes.

Yes creating the north loop would be good, would be a shame if it meant the cycle paths were lost though.

Is there room to go down Distillery Lane with a stop that aligns with the current footbridge, then behind the houses at Easter Dalry Place, over the line to Carstairs, along Sauchiebank, Russel Road, behind the industrial units and then join the Sub just past the existing mainline junction?

Interesting suggestion, basically a parallel track from Dalry Road: https://www.google.com/maps/@55.9453515,-3.2182153,75a,35y,249h,73.43t/data=!3m1!1e3 (3d view looking along the line). Biggest challenges would be gaining height from Russell Road to clear the WCML, and of course the actual building of the whole thing!

 

[gingertom]

Interesting idea for the West end though I think the question was more for the East end.

You could build an interchange stop at Brunstane with the line then going over the ECML and taking the Leith Docks route down to meet the proposed New tram line in Leith somewhere. All pie in the sky of course.

not necessarily pie in the sky. The planners have been looking at extending the tram network before the first route was finished, even in the York Place cut back form. As always it's down to money, or lack thereof. I'll try and dig out a link to the map.

 

[najaB]

Biggest challenges would be gaining height from Russell Road to clear the WCML, and of course the actual building of the whole thing!

Maybe the whole thing could be on a viaduct if clearance at ground-level is an issue.

 

[railjock]

Maybe the whole thing could be on a viaduct if clearance at ground-level is an issue.

The Edinburgh El has a ring to it.

 

[NotATrainspott]

Edinburgh has a fully integrated tram and bus network. The tram is an addition onto the bus network, rather than a way for the rail network to expand. The tram will serve routes which see a large volume of important bus travel - to the airport, to Leith, and to the south-east. The existence of the South Sub is essentially meaningless to a bus operator.

The base case for the line is full electrification and resignalling for passenger services for the diversions required for future Waverley capacity upgrades. That won't mean stations, because the use would be short-lived (albeit very important, like the new link at Anniesland built for the Queen Street works in 2016). After that, the only regular passenger services I could ever see happening would be tram-trains designed to get people commuting to the western Edinburgh employment sites. That project would consist of links between the South Sub and the tram heading west of Haymarket and the Line 3 route east of Cameron Toll plus some Rotherham-style tram-train stations up on the line. It might, just, be justifiable as an alternative to upgrading the City Bypass just as the Airdrie-Bathgate project was an alternative to upgrading the M8. There will have to be a lot of development to the west before that will be worthwhile though.

 

[Elwyn]

The stations on the south suburban line closed to passengers in 1962 because there weren’t many passengers. Most wanted to go into the city centre rather than around it and buses were much quicker. Has anything really changed?

 

[adrock1976]

The stations on the south suburban line closed to passengers in 1962 because there weren’t many passengers. Most wanted to go into the city centre rather than around it and buses were much quicker. Has anything really changed?

Apart from increased traffic congestion (which is common in major cities), I am not sure if there has also been an increase in residential population of that area or not.

 

[Stopper]

There are a lot of people on the buses heading down Merchiston/Morningside/Craiglockhart way in the mornings to be fair. There a few university campuses down there.

 

[Chrism20]

Any development of the south sub that has Lothian Buses style fares and enables the use of their ridacard would imo be a huge success.

Without that kind of fare system I think it would struggle to attract the numbers to make it viable as the majority of journeys would be wholly within Edinburgh

 

[NotATrainspott]

There are a lot of people on the buses heading down Merchiston/Morningside/Craiglockhart way in the mornings to be fair. There a few university campuses down there.

No one is disputing that. The problem, as ever, is that the South Sub doesn't actually serve a useful purpose for most of the people currently travelling to and from the areas along it. The relatively small number of people commuting across the way along the route of the South Sub can currently be accommodated just fine on the 38 bus.

 

[najaB]

Not technically an expansion, but definitely an investment... Or maybe not.

£218m rail overhaul would only cut journeys by a few minutes

A £218 million plan to cut rail journey times will result in “mere seconds of improvement” across Tayside and Fife, a new report has revealed.

The planned upgrade of the line at at Usan near Montrose now faces being scrapped, a decade after it was first mooted.

The single track stretch was identified as a reason for uncompetitive Dundee to Aberdeen rail journey times as far back as 2003.

The one-and-a-half mile section of single track between Usan and the South Esk viaduct at Montrose Basin, means that at certain times trains have to slow down and wait for others to pass.

The promise to dual it was included in proposals to cut journeys between Aberdeen and Edinburgh by 20 minutes which were first unveiled by the SNP in 2008.

However, a meeting of the Transport Scotland reference group overseeing the project has now heard the planned £218m investment will only scrape a two-minute improvement.

Transport Scotland’s head of rail Bill Reeve spoke to the city deal committee in Aberdeen on Friday where he revealed the much touted improvements around Montrose Basin had been found to offer no time benefits.

 

[InOban]

The trouble is that the bean counters can't seem to price the cost of lack of resilience in a network, whether it is impeded by single-track sections, flat junctions, or even sections shared by fast and stopping services. They seem content if a timetable works on good days. Of course there would only be a marginal time gain from eliminating some, most or all of the Usan section. I don't think its proponents ever claimed that.

 

[najaB]

Of course there would only be a marginal time gain from eliminating some, most of all of the Usan section. I don't think its proponents ever claimed that.

That said, £220M is a lot of money - could similar benefits be achieved for less money? E.g. could a resignalling reduce section occupation time?

 

[InOban]

As for the South Sub. Complete. bonkers.
At the site of Newington station, there are nine bus routes, probably 30buses every hour. All but two pass the university, royal mile and Waverley. The other two turn West at the university, and one, fitted with luggage racks runs to the airport. The. sub goes round in a huge arc until it gets back to Waverley..

A route to Leith has more sense

 

[clc]

We’ve known all along that doubling Usan wouldn’t save much time and has a poor bcr, I remember Altnabreac talking about it a few years ago and how it was about increasing capacity / improving resilience to allow more trains to operate.

Keith Brown made the commitment to double Usan but he is no longer a Minister. Perhaps the vision for future improvements is less ambitious than it was.

 

[Highlandspring]

That said, £220M is a lot of money - could similar benefits be achieved for less money? E.g. could a resignalling reduce section occupation time?

Montrose - Usan was resignalled in January 2010. Linespeed over the single line section (which is about 2.5 miles long) is 50mph.

 

[najaB]

Montrose - Usan was resignalled in January 2010. Linespeed over the single line section (which is about 2.5 miles long) is 50mph.

Ah, I remember that now - that was when Usan box went. Is there any possibility of raising that linespeed, and especially the entry/exit speed at the south end (given that most/all trains call at Montrose)?

How long are the blocks north and south of the single line section? Can two trains heading in the same direction queue while waiting for the section to clear?

 

[Aictos]

What about Grangemouth regaining a passenger service as I believe there was tentative plans to do so as a idea forwarded by Network Rail and supported by Falkirk Council who the last I heard were undertaking a feasibility study into the projects potential.

The idea was that the Falkirk Grahamston terminators would be extended but looking on RTT I can't see any such services but I can see Cumbernauld terminators so in a timetable recast could they be extended to a new Grangemouth station?

Is there any news/update if this is likely to go ahead?

 

[Stopper]

What about Grangemouth regaining a passenger service as I believe there was tentative plans to do so as a idea forwarded by Network Rail and supported by Falkirk Council who the last I heard were undertaking a feasibility study into the projects potential.

The idea was that the Falkirk Grahamston terminators would be extended but looking on RTT I can't see any such services but I can see Cumbernauld terminators so in a timetable recast could they be extended to a new Grangemouth station?

Is there any news/update if this is likely to go ahead?

The Grahamston terminators are now being extended through to Edinburgh as stoppers which has resulted in Linlithgow & Polmont being axed from the Edinburgh-Dunblane services. This has probably killed all hope of a Grangemouth station. It’s a shame as I think Grangemouth-Glasgow Queen Street via Cumbernauld 2tph would have been a better idea.

 

[Chrism20]

The Grahamston terminators are now being extended through to Edinburgh as stoppers which has resulted in Linlithgow & Polmont being axed from the Edinburgh-Dunblane services. This has probably killed all hope of a Grangemouth station. It’s a shame as I think Grangemouth-Glasgow Queen Street via Cumbernauld 2tph would have been a better idea.

The post says that they can see Cumbernauld terminators not Grahamston ones. There will still be Cumbernauld terminators following the timetable change.