St Andrews Transport Study - rail link option

[Boff]

I guess the question there is whether it's better to pander to their prejudices and spend an eyewatering amount of money on a railway for them in the hopes that they will deign to use it, even though that money could be transformational elsewhere. You could just force their hands by introducing road pricing and low speed limits until they give up.

I keep hearing that this 'money could be transformational elsewhere', but I don't know where else it could be used.

It's coming out of the transport budget for Scotland, so can only be spent on transport, and the only way I can really see a transport project being 'transformational' would be rail connections to a town that never had one (or maybe a dual carriageway built somewhere, but that's a whole other can of worms). Looking at the top 50 largest towns/cities in Scotland, there are only a few without direct rail connections:

• Peterhead (19,060 pop + fairly high tourist demand): Really needs a rail connection, but due to the distance to any nearby railway this would cost an order of magnitude more than this project, and so isn't really something that this money could be used on.
• St Andrews (18,410 pop + high tourist demand + large uni)
• Penicuik (16,150 pop): Most traffic would be commuters trying to get into central Edinburgh, and without bulldozing half of the city, any rail connection would take such a long route that busses would just be faster

Essentially what I'm trying to convey is that although yes this is a lot of money, there's not much better that it could be spent on. Electrification, a small fleet of new train stock, additional bus/coach links or maybe a really short tram route somewhere might provide some really good benefit, but certainly not significantly more than this project.

 

[leightonbd]

Don't you know that St Andrews is the largest conurbation in Northeast Fife without a railway station? Won't somebody please think of the house prices

Which are, OFC, off the scale already… there’s a problem in St A, as I’m sure you’re aware, but a rail link is not going to solve it.

 

[Davester50]

It seems a non-starter for me - the LRT also sounds the better option but then the isolated units is an issue,.

Same for me, and instead of focussing on one terminus, the tram can visit the various campus sites at Guardbridge, and over the town.
A Dundee to St Andrews Shuttle would work well, with hopefully another stop or 2 before the Rail Bridge. There's a sizeable new housing scheme that's been built just south of the Bridge.

How would Option 1 fit with the existing service to Dundee? A reduction in Edinburgh to Dundee trains? An increase in time adding a St Andrews stop, or is this going to be an additional service?

 

[Gaelan]

Better still, integrated ticketing (assuming this doesn't exist already)

There's integrated ticketing, but not integrated fares: I can buy a ticket that says "Edinburgh to St Andrews Bus" on it, but it costs exactly the sum of a bus ticket and a train ticket, which works out significantly more than an equivalent journey by one mode only. Railcards also aren't valid, which makes it rather useless in a student town.

Other issues with the bus link are:
(1) capacity: even with the frequencies as good as they are, the busses following an LNER arrival from London are very often full and standing, with many passengers also carrying luggage.
(2) journey time: because of bus unreliability, unclear delay policies, and a significant trek over the footbridge, I never catch the last possible bus to get my train, and I doubt many others do either, which means significant wait time at Leuchars. A timed cross-platform interchange (as they propose for the tram option) would solve all of these problems.

I'm enthusiastic about the light rail option, assuming it's ticketed as a true NR station with reasonable fares, not a "add-on" integrated service available to a small number of stations. (Remember, student town - people can and do travel to St Andrews from nearly any station in the country.)

 

[takno]

I keep hearing that this 'money could be transformational elsewhere', but I don't know where else it could be used.

It's coming out of the transport budget for Scotland, so can only be spent on transport, and the only way I can really see a transport project being 'transformational' would be rail connections to a town that never had one (or maybe a dual carriageway built somewhere, but that's a whole other can of worms). Looking at the top 50 largest towns/cities in Scotland, there are only a few without direct rail connections:

• Peterhead (19,060 pop + fairly high tourist demand): Really needs a rail connection, but due to the distance to any nearby railway this would cost an order of magnitude more than this project, and so isn't really something that this money could be used on.
• St Andrews (18,410 pop + high tourist demand + large uni)
• Penicuik (16,150 pop): Most traffic would be commuters trying to get into central Edinburgh, and without bulldozing half of the city, any rail connection would take such a long route that busses would just be faster

Essentially what I'm trying to convey is that although yes this is a lot of money, there's not much better that it could be spent on. Electrification, a small fleet of new train stock, additional bus/coach links or maybe a really short tram route somewhere might provide some really good benefit, but certainly not significantly more than this project.

In the fantastically unlikely event that you can't do something more worthwhile with the money (electrification of a couple of significant branches, partial replacement of the HST fleet, part-pay for some trams in Edinburgh or Glasgow, huge number of new electric buses for cities, pedestrian or bus priority schemes), then you could just not spend it on transport. It would buy quite a lot of new hospital or schools, or they could use it to not implement their risky income tax plans. This isn't Brewster's millions.

 

[sannox]

I keep hearing that this 'money could be transformational elsewhere', but I don't know where else it could be used.

Transformational is in the eye of the beholder I guess. There are several things in Strategic Transport Projects Review 2 which are listed as transformational.

Personally, some of the work on early phases of Clyde Metro would be very much that - light rail connection to Glasgow Airport and Paisley. Then extensions via the innovation district and Renfrew (24K population with no rail service) plus a future line to Glasgow via the QEUH which is one of the most major hospitals in the country. I would imagine that has a cost benefit much in advance of this scheme.

 

[Oxfordblues]

Shut by Richard Marsh (Labour) in 1969 after the Burgh Council refused to subsidise the line for just £20k per annum. Now it'll cost up to a staggering £188m to reinstate! The Burgh Council clearly thought the Tay Road Bridge opened in 1966 at a cost of £6m was the future.

 

[ajrm]

Shut by Richard Marsh (Labour) in 1969 after the Burgh Council refused to subsidise the line for just £20k per annum. Now it'll cost up to a staggering £188m to reinstate! The Burgh Council clearly thought the Tay Road Bridge opened in 1966 at a cost of £6m was the future.

Fair enough, but it was the opening of the Tay Road Bridge that killed traffic on the St Andrews branch.

 

[stevieinselby]

Is it, though? The Stourbridge Shuttle seems to work OK.

The Stourbridge Shuttle has 100% redundancy in the fleet – they have 2 vehicles with only 1 needed in service. That is not a cost effective way of running transport, and gives a lower asset utilisation than pretty much any other operation around. Especially if you are going for something that is completely bespoke and unique (rather than something that may be in use elsewhere but you're only buying a couple of), that introduces much bigger risks around reliability and the future operation, which is never a route you want to go down if you can avoid it.