Edinburgh Park Railway Station
The final item of business is a members' business debate on motion S3M-1118, in the name of Margaret Smith, on Edinburgh Park railway station. It will be concluded without any question being put.
Motion debated,
That the Parliament commends the continuing economic contribution made by Edinburgh Park not only to Edinburgh's economy but to Scotland as whole; congratulates the park on its numerous green initiatives encouraging employees to choose public transport and ease the heavily congested road system surrounding the park; understands that a comprehensive public transport infrastructure is integral to the further growth of this area; considers that there should be clarification as to exactly why Edinburgh Park may not be included on the main Edinburgh to Glasgow line until 2016, forcing employees travelling from the west to travel on to Haymarket Station before doubling back on themselves; acknowledges that, in order to increase connectivity across Scotland, improve business links with Glasgow and aid environmental initiatives, Edinburgh Park must be included on this line as a matter of urgency, and believes that Edinburgh Park must be included as a stop on the Glasgow to Edinburgh mainline without further delay.
I thank everyone for attending tonight's debate, particularly as it is in the graveyard shift before the recess. I also thank colleagues who signed my motion.
Although, at first glance, it might seem that the debate focuses on Edinburgh and, in particular, west Edinburgh, the issue at stake affects not just people in the central belt but people throughout Scotland. West Edinburgh is at the heart of much of Scotland's economic prosperity. It is the home of Edinburgh airport and the Royal Bank of Scotland's headquarters and is at the epicentre of major transport infrastructure improvements such as the new Forth crossing and the trams. It is an economic jigsaw puzzle, of which Edinburgh Park is a crucial part.
I believe that there is a strong case for a stop on the Edinburgh to Glasgow railway line at Edinburgh Park station. Many of us believed that we were tantalisingly close to achieving that last year, but there has been a lack of clarity on why Transport Scotland and the Government have not taken the final step and delivered that as soon as they could.
Councillor Jenny Dawe, who is the leader of the City of Edinburgh Council, was right when she said:
"Edinburgh Park is at the heart of Scotland's key growth corridor and is of national significance to our economic well being."
Every day, 30,000 people commute to the area and there is scope for that figure to increase by 40,000 to 50,000 in the next few years. Twenty-one of the country's top companies operate there. It is Scotland's fourth largest economic area, after the centres of Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen, and it continues to expand—new offices and hotels are planned.
The debate is not simply about having an extra stop on some commuter train services. It is about widening access for the central belt's 3.2 million residents to a key business centre and to job opportunities; it is about increasing direct connectivity between our two major cities, Edinburgh and Glasgow, thereby increasing their competitiveness in Europe; it is about continuing to attract major international businesses to develop their operations here in Scotland; and, crucially, it is about providing a successful business park for those ventures to locate in, rather than the green belt of west Edinburgh.
I have campaigned for a halt at Edinburgh Park on the Edinburgh to Glasgow main line for many years, since before the station was built. I have lodged parliamentary questions on the subject and have met ministers, Network Rail staff and others to discuss it. I thank the representatives of Transport Scotland, Network Rail, TIE and New Edinburgh Ltd who met me in advance of the debate.
Edinburgh Park station, which opened in December 2003, was built at a cost of £4.5 million by New Edinburgh Ltd and the City of Edinburgh Council. The New Edinburgh Ltd partnership jointly invested in the construction of the station on the clear understanding that it would be included as a halt on the Edinburgh to Glasgow main line in the future, but there are still no direct services to Glasgow.
In June 2006, the then Minister for Transport, Tavish Scott, asked Transport Scotland to establish how stops on Glasgow services at Edinburgh Park could be facilitated. It was hoped that issues to do with the impact on the timetable and so on could be resolved by the time the December 2007 timetable was issued. I believe that First ScotRail and Network Rail were instructed to plan on that basis, pending a final decision. There is a need for clarity on why those stops have not been provided and on what progress is being made to improve services to Edinburgh Park station.
What percentage of trains between Edinburgh and Glasgow does the member propose should stop at Edinburgh Park?
I ask the member to let me continue; I will not necessarily come up with the solution.
In response to a parliamentary question that I asked last September, the Minister for Transport, Infrastructure and Climate Change said:
"Airdrie to Bathgate trains from Glasgow will stop at Edinburgh Park from 2010. It will take a few years longer before the necessary infrastructure, including the Dalmeny chord, will be in place to provide capacity for additional services on the Edinburgh to Glasgow route via Falkirk that can stop at Edinburgh Park. The full programme will be completed by 2016".—[Official Report, Written Answers, 25 October 2007; S3W-4797.]
As with many other issues, it would be helpful if more detail could be provided on what parts of the programme will be delivered and when.
Edinburgh Park station is served by trains to Bathgate, Dunblane and Newcraighall. Edinburgh Park visitors and commuters who wish to travel to or from Glasgow must either change at Linlithgow or Polmont, or travel into Haymarket and back out to Edinburgh Park, which adds an average of 20 minutes to their journey.
Around 80 per cent of staff at Edinburgh Park travel to work by car—no doubt the number will increase in the years to come. However, the 2007 passenger survey showed that 1,500 rail journeys a day are being undertaken by people using Edinburgh Park station, and that use of the station is increasing year on year, with an average increase between 2006 and 2007 of 26 per cent in the morning peak and 21 per cent in the evening. Edinburgh Park's travel plan is ambitious in trying to get people out of their cars and reduce the figure for car use to 49 per cent by 2013. I hope that the Government is committed to doing everything it can to help.
It is not just about more convenient and sustainable travel, though. It is about the economics of taking forward the work of the Glasgow-Edinburgh collaboration project and the councils at either end of the M8 to ensure that Edinburgh and Glasgow can compete on a European stage.
Given the move to get faster journey times between Edinburgh and Glasgow, does the member have any information on how long the journey would take if an extra stop were added? Currently, intermittent trains stop at different stations. Is she suggesting that they should all stop at Edinburgh Park or that one train an hour should stop there?
There are different opinions about the length of journey time. Faber Maunsell has come up with a draft report, and is doing some work that suggests that the westbound journey time would increase by 30 seconds and that there would be no increase in the eastbound journey time. The minister is shaking his head—he is going tell us that the figures that he has been given by Network Rail suggest an increase of between two and three minutes. I know that Network Rail has been working on other timetabling issues on the Edinburgh to Glasgow route, and it might say that two to three minutes would be added. There is a difference of opinion about the impact on the timetable. There is probably also a difference of opinion about whether some of the intermittent services stopping elsewhere along the route could be taken away, certainly between now and the completion of the Airdrie to Bathgate improvements in December 2010. That could be considered.
This is an important area. As well as the Airdrie to Bathgate scheme, which will mean that there is a direct link between Edinburgh Park and Glasgow, there is the interchange between trams and trains to Edinburgh airport. It would be useful if the minister could give us more detail on that and the work that has been done on feasibility.
I accept that there are concerns. What we have here is what we might call the Edinburgh Park conundrum. There is probably no one in the chamber who does not accept that a strong economic case can be made by the business park, which is one of the best and most important business parks in the country, for a direct stop on this important line. The balance in the conundrum is what the disbenefits would be. It is a question of getting that balance right. There have been disappointments over the years since the park was opened. At different times, people believed that the service was about to be delivered, but that has not happened.
The Faber Maunsell report indicated that, if there were a direct service, 900 more passengers a day—approximately 200,000 a year—would use the rail service at Edinburgh Park station. That is 900 people whose cars would not be adding to the congestion and the queues on the M8 and on the fringe of the most congested part of our capital city. Findings from key businesses in the area show that 85 per cent of surveyed staff would use the station if it was included in Edinburgh to Glasgow services.
I am not saying that this is an easy situation, and I am not saying that there is only one answer. What I am saying is that my campaign, which is backed by many other local MSPs, also has the backing of key business leaders and people such as the convener of economic development at City of Edinburgh Council, Councillor Tom Buchanan, who says:
"It is vitally important for the city's economic wellbeing that EP is fully integrated into the mainline rail network. As one of Europe's leading business locations, EP has seen massive growth over the past 5 years, outstripping even the economies of China and India."
Edinburgh Park is one of Scotland's success stories, and I think that it can benefit not only Edinburgh but Glasgow and the central belt more generally.
As I said, 21 of our largest companies are based at Edinburgh Park and they back the campaign for a stop on the Edinburgh to Glasgow line. They include BT, AEGON Asset Management, HSBC, Miller Developments, Oracle and Menzies Distribution.
By adding a stop on the line, we can reduce congestion, increase rail passenger numbers and modal shift, improve the local and national economies, contribute positively to co-operation and connectivity between our two major cities, encourage the expansion of office space and hotel development at Edinburgh Park rather than in west Edinburgh's green belt and, in so doing, deliver economic and environmental benefits for the whole of Scotland.
I hope that the Scottish Government and Transport Scotland will recognise the need to add a stop as a priority for immediate action, rather than waiting for a further three years to take any action.
I welcome the opportunity to take part in the debate and commend Margaret Smith for lodging the motion and bringing the debate to the Parliament. It raises an important issue. There are clearly many benefits to having trains stop at Edinburgh Park, but there are many questions to be asked, such as the one that I asked her in my intervention. David Whitton put forward a fairly similar idea in his intervention.
I suspect that there is clear agreement across the parties on the earlier parts of the motion. It is absolutely right to commend the economic contribution that Edinburgh Park has made to Edinburgh and Scotland. Margaret Smith mentioned a range of companies that are based there, and I suspect that there will be many more in the future. Members will also all commend the green initiatives that Edinburgh Park has put in place.
I am sure that we are also all agreed that trying to connect Edinburgh and Glasgow better is an excellent idea. Better connectivity could create a powerhouse economy for Scotland, but the question on which we must focus is whether what the motion proposes will create better connectivity between Edinburgh and Glasgow. That is at the heart of the issue.
The most important point is to look hard at what effects the proposal would have on the Edinburgh to Glasgow line, which is the flagship line for First ScotRail. It is the most important line connecting our two largest cities, so it is important that we bottom out exactly what effect adding a stop would have on it. I have not read the Faber Maunsell report to which Margaret Smith referred, but I have seen a précis of it, which suggested that journey times would be increased by 30 seconds in one direction and not at all in the other. I would like to look into that a lot more deeply.
I am no expert in physics, but it seems to me that it makes no sense to suggest that it would make no difference to slow down a train for minutes, stop at a platform while passengers get off and others get on and then try to get up to speed again after that. That defies logic and physics. To say that it would only be 30 seconds seems to me to be fairly tight. The journey time for a Glasgow train that stops at Croy and Lenzie seems to be about five minutes longer than that for a train that does not stop at either. Therefore, without getting into the science of it, I think that the suggestion that the difference would be perhaps two or three minutes makes sense. That is an important point to bear in mind.
That said, if adding the stop increases the journey time by two or three minutes, there could still be a compelling case for stopping some of the trains between Edinburgh and Glasgow at Edinburgh Park. The purpose of my intervention was to find out whether Margaret Smith had a fixed view on that. From what I heard in response, I suspect that she does not.
I am particularly interested to hear about the additional 900 passengers a day that we think would take advantage of the service. It would be really interesting to find out at what times of the day they are most likely to travel. My guess is that 890 of them would probably travel in rush hour in the mornings and evenings, so there is a pretty strong case for stopping one or two services at Edinburgh Park over that one-and-a-half-hour period in the morning and the evening. That would cut down congestion and would be a worthwhile service. The few times that I have been to Edinburgh Park station, I have been the only person there and felt pretty lonely on the platform, so my guess is that there is probably no point in stopping the trains there during most of the rest of the day and that the service ought to resume as normal then.
The motion is good and it is a good debate to have. However, the word that I do not like in the motion is "urgency"—it says:
"Edinburgh Park must be included on this line as a matter of urgency".
We need to do a lot more homework as a matter of urgency and then consider the issues. However, I am persuaded that it is worth stopping some of the trains, though certainly not most of them, at Edinburgh Park.
I thank Margaret Smith for securing the debate.
We should all use sustainable transport more often and depend less on our cars. It is increasingly important that we do so. It is not easy to bring about significant modal shift, but it is always easier to encourage people to use trains than to encourage them to use buses—it is even easier if people are offered a service that means that they do not have to change trains and double back on themselves.
In my region we have few opportunities to improve train services without first putting in place significant new infrastructure. The infrastructure at Edinburgh Park has been provided, so I find the transport situation frustrating. Edinburgh Park is on the main line and trains run through the station, so the simple and cheap solution is for the trains to stop there, as people want them to do.
Sustainable transport solutions depend on getting planning right. Workplaces should be easily accessible by public transport and we should use existing transport corridors to best advantage. That is why planning authorities regularly insist on green travel plans when major developments are proposed. The Edinburgh Park development was approached in the right way: a major employment centre was developed alongside a mainline railway, and the Miller Group, CEC Holdings and the City of Edinburgh Council worked together and invested a significant sum—I think Ms Smith said that it was £4.5 million—in the railway station in 2003. People understand why New Edinburgh Ltd feels let down. It delivered what was asked of it at no small expense and expected trains to stop at the station by 2007.
For clarity, the total cost was £4.5 million and New Edinburgh Ltd's contribution was £1.5 million.
I thank the minister.
Transport Scotland said that there are no plans for mainline services to stop at Edinburgh Park station in the foreseeable future. It is important that we do not allow a simple but effective public transport improvement to slip through our fingers. I do not accept that the impact on journey times would be so great as to create problems for some service users. A balance must always be struck between the provision of ever-faster express trains and the provision of services for commuters. Like Mr Brown, I am keen for mainline services to stop at Edinburgh Park, at least at peak rush hour.
As Ms Smith said, an independent study concluded that passenger numbers would increase by 200,000 in the first year if mainline trains stopped at Edinburgh Park. I agree that we should urge the Government to work closely with Transport Scotland and First Scotrail, to ascertain what progress we can make as soon as possible.
I thank Margaret Smith for securing the debate.
The provision of a mainline service that stops at Edinburgh Park station is a matter of urgency. The longer people drive to Edinburgh Park rather than take the train, the more likely it is that they will form an ingrained habit, which it will be difficult to change.
In Australia, when big new housing and business developments are built, transport is put in place first, so that it is ready for the people who will work or live in the development. We do not have such a wise approach to planning, but we should consider adopting that approach.
The argument about journey times seems almost irrelevant. If the Government is keen to reduce our impact on the environment, a three-minute delay seems an extremely small price to pay for getting people out of their cars and on to trains—especially if we are talking about 900 people per day.
On the London underground, trains run safely at 2.5 minute intervals, because there is an advanced signalling system. In France, Germany and Italy, trains travel at double or more the speeds that our trains do and at fairly short intervals, because those countries use an advanced signalling system, which we in our wisdom have refused to introduce, simply because it is expensive. Our approach has been bizarre. I know that signalling is not the responsibility of the Scottish Executive and that an advanced system would have to be introduced throughout the United Kingdom, but the minister would do transport in not just Scotland but the whole of the UK an enormous favour if he lobbied for Network Rail to invest in the continental signalling system. The system would enable us to double the number of trains on our tracks and trains would travel at higher speeds and more safely.
Our current signalling system is Victorian; it has semaphore signals and lights. On the continent, the advanced radio and radar system ensures absolute safety and is loved by drivers. The drivers in Scotland to whom I have spoken would love such a system to be introduced here.
It seems like a long time ago, but I remember that when I was the transport minister, I was very interested in Edinburgh Park station because, as Margaret Smith rightly said, tens of thousands of people do not have an easy option to get to that area from across the central belt. The potential number of passengers that could access Edinburgh Park needs to be considered urgently. Therefore, I congratulate Margaret Smith on securing the debate.
The area has South Gyle station, so it is not without a railway station with routes, but there is a fundamental need to consider the options and how we can increase the capacity of railway access to the whole area around Edinburgh Park, including the Gogar area. The new trams will come along soon, so there will be opportunities to do that. Now is a good time for the minister to sit down and take a comprehensive look at the opportunities in the area.
We face challenges if we are to tackle congestion not only in Edinburgh and the Lothians but in the whole central belt. The points that Robin Harper made are crucial to the debate. It is not only about congestion on our roads; it is also about congestion on our rail network. I know from travelling between Edinburgh and Glasgow and down from Stirling that the tricky point is getting access to Haymarket and Waverley stations. The limits to capacity there raise a fundamental problem that is worthy of examination. If there is any delay, the trains all tend to back up.
The Glasgow to Edinburgh connection is the flagship connection in Scotland; it is vital for connectivity across the country. David Whitton's point is valid in the context of the debate. Whether a stop causes a delay of one minute, two minutes or 30 seconds, we already have a line that has not sped up for years. The challenge is to re-evaluate connections across the central belt as the basis of the whole rail network. Now is a good time for the Scottish Government to go back to first principles. We need a Glasgow to Edinburgh express option, which will be challenging to achieve—even getting four trains an hour to fit the current timetable is challenging for the rail network. There is a great need for an express service between the two cities, but there is also the issue of connecting all the commuter towns in between. David Whitton is right to say that we cannot afford to do one at the expense of the other. The challenge is that the line does not currently have the capacity easily to deliver on those requirements.
There is also the minister's commitment to electrify the Glasgow to Edinburgh railway route. Although we would welcome that, it should be part of the mix in this discussion.
Also relevant to strategic railway network access is the other key Edinburgh to Glasgow railway route: the long-distance trains that run from London through to Glasgow Central station. That line is underutilised. It is a very fast route and a pleasant one, because the trains are longer and nowhere near as busy as they are on the Edinburgh to Glasgow line, but there are hardly any trains on it, so it does not meet commuter demand. Trains on that line could give different connectivity on the other side of Glasgow, from Glasgow Central down to Ayrshire. That issue should be examined.
I am less concerned on this occasion to take pot shots at the minister, although I will be happy to do so on another occasion. The key point this evening is that there is agreement across the chamber that the issue needs to be looked at urgently. There is no quick fix but, to come back to Margaret Smith's point, the station was built to enable the maximum possible access to Edinburgh Park, which it does not currently deliver. That is the context in which we should debate the issue.
I add my congratulations to Margaret Smith on securing a debate on this important topic. I do not intend to detain members for long, but I add my support to the call for Edinburgh Park station to be integrated into the rail network as soon as possible.
Edinburgh Park is in my region of Lothians. Almost daily, I and countless other people are delayed by enormous traffic jams in the area. Many of those traffic jams are caused by people who are going to and from Edinburgh Park in their cars. Anything that we can do to change the situation so that they use public transport, including trains, is to be supported.
I have heard two main objections to doing something about the present situation. The first is that we would add to the journey time of trains between Edinburgh and Glasgow. There has been some debate about how long that delay would be, but 30 seconds is not realistic—trains need to slow down and speed up, so we would not manage that time even with Japanese underground-style train packers.
Gavin Brown was correct: we have seen only a snapshot of the Faber Maunsell report and we have only some of the interim results, so we do not know what is behind the figure of 30 seconds. I guess that the suggestion is that journey time could be made up on other parts of the network. Like most others, I believe that getting a train to stop and allowing people to get on and off in 30 seconds would probably be a superhuman feat that would be beyond even Stewart Stevenson.
I do not know about that, but it is generally accepted by members that three minutes is a reasonable ballpark estimate. I am told that the trains need to go to Glasgow or Edinburgh and turn round within two hours to get maximum efficiency, which would still be possible with a stop of three minutes at Edinburgh Park. The effect of adding three minutes to the journey time of people going between Edinburgh and Glasgow would not be all that great, particularly in view of the fact that some of those people then take another train back to the station that they went through 10 minutes earlier.
A second objection is that, by increasing journey times, we would increase the likelihood of delays and cancellations throughout the network. It is difficult to assess that argument's value, so I go along with the suggestion of Gavin Brown and others that we should have what we might call a pilot study, with some trains stopping at the time that they are most likely to be needed and with monitoring of the effect on efficiency. It is a bit slack just to accept that the whole system would collapse if we added three minutes to a train journey without finding out whether that is the case.
Climate change demands that we get cars off the road. We have a super brand-new station that is badly used but has a busy train line through it. We should do everything in our power to get trains to stop at the station as soon as possible. I ask the minister to give credence to that in his summing-up speech.
Welcome to the rail enthusiasts club—that is clearly what we are tonight. I thank Margaret Smith for securing this debate on an interesting subject that is of key importance to the local economy. I agree absolutely with Sarah Boyack that we must consider the long-term interest—it is why I am interested in ensuring that we maximise our investment at Edinburgh Park. To respond to her point about city centre to city centre times, we have the objective of getting those down to about 35 minutes, which we believe is credible, through incremental rather than fundamental change.
My constituency stands on the railway line—in fact, the railway is the dividing line between my constituency and the next one. Many people travel from Lenzie to Croy and then on. Will the minister consider carrying out an analysis of the number of people who travel from Lenzie and Croy to Edinburgh Park and the number who travel to Edinburgh Park from Falkirk, Polmont and Linlithgow? That could lend the fast service from Edinburgh to Glasgow some scope to stop at Edinburgh Park, because it might then not have to stop at Falkirk, Polmont and Linlithgow and we could improve the commuter service from those places.
I will return to David Whitton's point, which is reasonable.
Edinburgh Park will probably be the hotspot for economic development in central Scotland in the coming years, building on the substantial growth that has already occurred there. There are huge workforces and the area is an important economic contributor to Edinburgh and beyond. The rail element, which came through the opening of Edinburgh Park station in December 2003, involved a big joint venture and substantial investment.
At present, four trains call at Edinburgh Park each hour. It is probably advisable for people who are coming from the west to change at Linlithgow. That—rather than going to Haymarket—adds approximately five minutes to their journey.
I will highlight one fact that might give us some insight. Some class 158 trains go from Dunblane to Edinburgh—class 158s also operate on the main Glasgow to Edinburgh line—but only one service stops at Edinburgh Park. By coincidence, the journey time difference is three minutes. That is not to say that one cannot consider other measures to bring the time difference down, but it gives us a feel for the idea that the stop is likely to add three minutes. Our objective is to get frequency on the Edinburgh to Glasgow line up from four trains an hour to six an hour. That would give us substantial scope to address some of the needs of the west of Edinburgh in the longer term.
There has been some discussion of the number of people who use Edinburgh Park station. The number that I have is 1,000. Margaret Smith has 1,500, but let us not fall out over that. She has suggested that 900 more people could use Edinburgh Park. The important point is our belief that there is a £60 million value for every minute we can get off the journey time between Edinburgh and Glasgow—£60 million per minute. If services stop at Edinburgh Park, that creates an advantage for the people who get off there, but a disadvantage—which we can measure to some extent—for those whose journey is lengthened. The trick is to get the balance right. The number of people who use Edinburgh Park is relatively modest compared with the 30,000 a day who commute to the area—in that sense, we are tapping only a small part of the potential for travel to work at Edinburgh Park—and the 20,000 a day who travel between Edinburgh and Glasgow.
We need to understand what the potential is, which brings us to the important point that we do not have sufficient information about the unrealised potential for travel to work at Edinburgh Park. There have been several attempts to get information. I have asked officials to be more proactive on the matter and to engage directly with businesses in Edinburgh Park, so that we can more properly understand where people are coming from to work there.
The Airdrie to Bathgate line will provide the direct connection between Glasgow and Edinburgh Park, when that service is implemented in 2010. We have good connections from Polmont and Linlithgow to Edinburgh Park, and from Bathgate more generally, but that leaves the question of connections from Falkirk High relatively unresolved. I hope that improved information will help us to understand what we can do in that regard. The issue is complex; there is an interlocking set of advantages and disadvantages that we have to examine carefully.
If I can pull together the mood of the meeting, it seems likely that people might, in the short term—before the changes with the Airdrie to Bathgate line—accept the benefits of an occasional direct stop being opened up, possibly in the intermittent way that has been talked about. Has that suggestion been modelled by Transport Scotland or Network Rail?
Modelling is an imperfect science and, at the moment, the indications are that the disbenefits significantly outweigh the benefits.
Robin Harper talked about signalling, which is a big constraint on our ability to improve the network. There is a lack of signalling engineers, as we have seen elsewhere. In 2015 or thereby, the European signalling system—a moving block system, which will improve capacity—may come in. As one increases speed, the gap between trains has to increase, so the capacity of the line is reduced. The issue is complex.
I thank Margaret Smith for initiating the debate. We are moving towards having more stops at Edinburgh Park. I am open to considering every opportunity to draw forward the point at which we can increase stops there, but I believe that Edinburgh Park will undoubtedly be a very important part of our future rail system. I worked for 20 years at Sighthill and I wish that I had had the station at that time.
Meeting closed at 17:40.