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Friday, March 29, 2024

Scottish Ministers set out ‘utterly convincing’ case for high speed rail

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Scottish Ministers have set out their ‘utterly convincing’ case for high speed rail to reach Scotland.

Ministers highlighted the Scottish Partnership Group’s advice that work to build a high speed rail network ‘could actually start ahead of planned completion’ in England.

At the ‘Making HS2 Happen’ conference last week, Cabinet Secretary for Infrastructure and Capital Investment Alex Neil said they ‘stood ready to begin preparatory work’, looking at potential routes and station locations.

Mr Neil said:

“We have committed £1 billion on improvements on the Edinburgh-Glasgow route and are in the process of electrifying the core rail network between Edinburgh and Glasgow, reducing journey times and increasing the number of trains.

“We have also improved the Highland Line by adding three extra services which will lead to faster journeys.

“And we are absolutely convinced of the benefits of high speed rail. We are looking to bring forward planning for new high speed lines with the aim of linking them to the network proposed for England.”

2 COMMENTS

  1. What puff.  It’s politics.  

    Motives:-
    (i) Scotland wants to do all the planning (or fake doing the planning) and then claim that it needs tax raising powers – the motive is to separate out Scotlands finances from the UKs
    (ii) even if they did start to build, the motive would be to conduct a few bits of preliminary earthworks, and then claim that ‘the English government’ needs to commit to build up from Manchester to the border (which is likely to be extremely uneconomic).

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