Opinions on STPR option - New surface terminal station in Glasgow

[clc]

One of the options in the STPR is:

The provision of a new city centre surface station to the east of Glasgow Central linking the rail network to the south and east of the city

http://www.transport.gov.scot/sites...ts/uploaded_reports/j10194a/j10194a-a2D25.pdf

What services do people think would operate into the new station and how many platforms would it need?

 

[jopsuk]

A station to the east of Central? On the surface?

 

[Blindtraveler]

As in the days of old all the Ayrshire stuff, Inverclyde too maybe?

 

[PaxVobiscum]

If the St. Enoch shopping centre is to close, let me be the first to start the repairs to the roof

 

[najaB]

A station to the east of Central? On the surface?

I take it that's a picture of the old St Enoch station?

 

[Railsigns]

If the St. Enoch shopping centre is to close, let me be the first to start the repairs to the roof

The Glasgow Central Capacity study of 2013 included three options for a new terminus station at St. Enoch with at least six platforms, all of which avoided the shopping centre but required demolition of other properties in the vicinity.

 

[clc]

The Glasgow Central Capacity study of 2013 included three options for a new terminus station at St. Enoch with at least six platforms, all of which avoided the shopping centre but required demolition of other properties in the vicinity.

Interesting, so potentially Queen St sized. Do you have a link to that study by any chance?

 

[Dvorak]

It seems an incredible waste of city centre land to stick a big railway station on it. So the idea would be for Glasgow to then have three city centre termini? Or four, if the high speed line to Edinburgh, which was I think proposed to run to High St, ever happened (or has that idea gone now?).

 

[Railsigns]

Do you have a link to that study by any chance?

The report may not be in the public domain. I can't find a link to it anyway.

 

[PaxVobiscum]

I take it that's a picture of the old St Enoch station?

Yes indeed, and the snide reference I made was to the fact that the demolition went ahead when conservation was still being sought. Here's the infamous photograph referred to:

http://www.eastbank.org.uk/images/Glasgow/GW0118.jpg

 

[najaB]

Yes indeed, and the snide reference I made was to the fact that the demolition went ahead when conservation was still being sought.

That would have been a fantastic public space - I can just picture it being used for concerts, etc.

 

[clc]

The report may not be in the public domain. I can't find a link to it anyway.

Presumably at least one of the options would include interchange with the Argyle Line?

 

[clc]

As in the days of old all the Ayrshire stuff, Inverclyde too maybe?

I've seen suggestions that Barrhead, East Kilbride and South Glasgow electrics could be diverted via the Strathbungo Link, which Transport Scotland allowed for when the M74 extension was built. There's a gap under the new road wide enough for a double track line.

Edit: I'm not sure from looking at Google how the Cathcart Circle could connect to the Strathbungo Link.

 

[Railsigns]

Presumably at least one of the options would include interchange with the Argyle Line?

One option includes a concourse connection to Argyle Street station.

 

[clc]

One option includes a concourse connection to Argyle Street station.

Good to hear. Would be a wasted opportunity not to do so.

 

[clc]

Did any of the options include approach lines from Bellgrove like the original station had?

 

[Railsigns]

Did any of the options include approach lines from Bellgrove like the original station had?

Yes, option 2 has that as a sub-option. The option 3 layout isn't a complete triangle but includes bay platforms facing in both directions and well as two through platforms.

 

[clc]

Yes, option 2 has that as a sub-option. The option 3 layout isn't a complete triangle but includes bay platforms facing in both directions and well as two through platforms.

Option 3 must be quite far east if it has through platforms. I imagine they'd want to locate the station as far west as possible so it would connect to Argyle St Station and be as close to the CBD as it could feasibly be within the constraints of the site.

 

[NotATrainspott]

I'm not at all keen on the idea of effectively reopening St Enoch. It would increase capacity for heavy rail services, sure, but it would leave heavy rail responsible for transport needs which may well be much better suited to a light rail solution.

The Maryhill line is just not at all suited for heavy rail, as the distances involved are short and there is strong competition with buses. Even if more paths were available into Queen Street the Maryhill service would be the very last one to get them, as it requires a lot of subsidy and increasing the heavy rail frequency would probably require even more. A tram-train solution would allow the frequency to increase while reducing subsidy, as it would be a far more effective way of getting into the city centre. All those extra stops that it would have between the city centre and Ashfield means more passengers, and thus a reason for a higher frequency, and thus even more passengers. As I described on other posts about light rail, the service would then be able to do much more than carrying people to the city centre, and so passenger numbers and the benefits it would cause would be even greater.

On the south side, a Cathcart Circle conversion may mean a slightly lower standard of train than the 385s but it would allow effectively unlimited frequency increases and infrastructure changes to make the service even more useful and profitable. One such idea would be to build a street running section branching off at Whitecraigs and then following Ayr Road through Newton Mearns. You can have as shiny a heavy rail train as you like a few kilometres away at Patterton but a tram-train within walking distance will always be more appealing.

I think such a metro system would be totally complementary to a cross-city tunnel, and so the existence of one does not remove the case for the other. The St Enoch option, on the other hand, would try to do both and probably block both of them from happening. If you built a cross-city tunnel after reopening St Enoch, then you simply wouldn't need St Enoch any more. Likewise, if you did some of the line conversions you would probably end up using up the freed capacity by moving services away from St Enoch.

 

[clc]

An extract from Transport Scotland's Tram Train feasibility study:

The emergence of the Tram-Train concept, once it has been proved by the Sheffield pilot scheme, might offer a cost effective solution to serving other, relatively short distance, South Glasgow rail operations: Paisley Canal, Barrhead, East Kilbride, South Glasgow electric network, possibly using heavy rail trains for large peak loads.

You could run tram trains into the new St Enoch station off peak and heavy rail trains in the peak giving you the best of both worlds.

Potential services:

Paisley Canal to St Enoch via City Union Line. This could be fully tram train and have a 4tph frequency. New stations at West St and Gorbals.

Barrhead/Kilmarnock and East Kilbride to St Enoch via the Strathbungo Link. Barrhead and EK could be 4tph tram train off peak, 4tph heavy rail during the peak. Kilmarnock would be heavy rail only.

If the new station had an approach from Bellgrove you could make Maryhill services fully tram train and route them to St Enoch via Springburn. A tram spec flyover at Ashfield would cost much less than the figures Network Rail were quoting for a heavy rail flyover. Frequency would be 4tph. New station at Glasgow Cross.

If the new St Enoch station had through platforms perhaps you could join up Maryhill and Paisley Canal services. As these would be fully tram train you could build street running sections at each end if warranted.

TS think South Glasgow electrics could also be diverted to St Enoch though I'm unclear how that would be done. I'd personally be happy to leave Cathcart Circle services as heavy rail to Central and use the released capacity there to increase frequency.

 

[NotATrainspott]

An extract from Transport Scotland's Tram Train feasibility study:


You could run tram trains into the new St Enoch station off peak and heavy rail trains in the peak giving you the best of both worlds.

Potential services:

Paisley Canal to St Enoch via City Union Line. This could be fully tram train and have a 4tph frequency. New stations at West St, Gorbals and Glasgow Cross.

Barrhead/Kilmarnock and East Kilbride to St Enoch via the Strathbungo Link. Barrhead and EK could be 4tph tram train off peak, 4tph heavy rail during the peak. Kilmarnock would be heavy rail only.

If the new station had an approach from Bellgrove you could make Maryhill services fully tram train and route them to St Enoch via Springburn. A tram spec flyover at Ashfield would cost much less than the figures Network Rail were quoting for a heavy rail flyover. Frequency would be 4tph.

If the new station had through platforms perhaps you could join up Maryhill and Paisley Canal services. As these would be fully tram train you could build street running sections at each end if warranted.

TS think South Glasgow electrics could also be diverted to St Enoch though I'm unclear how that would be done. I'd personally be happy to leave Cathcart Circle services as heavy rail to Central and use the released capacity there to increase frequency.

But then you're totally missing the point of the tram train, which is to provide better penetration of services into the places where people actually go in a city rather than where the railway company were able to build their terminus and lines. That you can then use the same tram technology to improve penetration into the suburbs too is a nice feature, but not absolutely essential for the concept. People in Ashfield don't want to go to Springburn and Bellgrove - they want to go the city centre and places in between as directly as possible. You can provide any sort of roundabout line by joining up random bits of Victorian railway that you like but it doesn't change how people want to travel. Infrastructure exists to serve travel needs, rather than trying to change them. New lines to stimulate demand (e.g. radial routes) are only worthwhile when existing demands are met and there's some plausible reason for the new line to exist. For instance, it's now not beyond reason to consider a north-south NR line through Canary Wharf, but it would have been stupid to build it before the Jubilee Line and Crossrail linked it to the centre of London.

Any tram-train that can be swapped out for a heavy rail train at peak periods is nothing but a glorified electric Pacer. Tram-trains trade heavy rail quality for convenience, and that convenience is far more important than comfort for short rides within a city. It's simply impossible to provide the degree of convenience a tram-train needs to be popular using heavy rail for the city centre core. In a city centre, you need proper metro turn-up-and-go frequencies of 12tph or more. With line-of-sight you can breeze past the 40tph limit on the most advanced signalled systems like the DLR when required.

If you did move back to heavy rail at peak times, why bother with any of the tram running sections? You wouldn't be able to serve them, and the peak period is when they would be most in demand. Also, why in god's good earth would you want to have two separate fleets of trains for use at different times? If there are heavy rail trains available for use during the peak, then they would be sitting around idle the rest of the time, and vice-versa for the tram-trains. There is no economic sense in that concept whatsoever.

 

[clc]

I would suggest that the Tram Train feasibility study is the best available indicator of current thinking at Transport Scotland. The study indicates that TS believes some or most of the Kilmarnock, Barrhead, East Kilbride and South Glasgow electric services could be diverted into the potential St Enochs/Argyle Street station and that these could be either Heavy rail and/or Tram Train, if the latter could be seen as appropriate for the shorter distance routes on the corridor. Paisley Canal is also mentioned as a candidate for tram train and diversion to St Enoch. There is no suggestion that any of these would run on-street in the city centre. That's probably not what you want to hear but there we are.

 

[edwin_m]

I would suggest that the Tram Train feasibility study is the best available indicator of current thinking at Transport Scotland. The study indicates that TS believes some or most of the Kilmarnock, Barrhead, East Kilbride and South Glasgow electric services could be diverted into the potential St Enochs/Argyle Street station and that these could be either Heavy rail and/or Tram Train, if the latter could be seen as appropriate for the shorter distance routes on the corridor. Paisley Canal is also mentioned as a candidate for tram train and diversion to St Enoch. There is no suggestion that any of these would run on-street in the city centre. That's probably not what you want to hear but there we are.

In which case the proposal is flawed. Tram-trains are significantly more expensive than trains of equivalent floor area, as well as requiring various changes to infrastructure and operating rules that could reduce capacity. So if the proposed route is entirely on segregated railway then a lightweight train similar to the ones being bought by Merseytravel would be a better bet than a tram-train.

If on-street operation in the city centre was acceptable then use of tram-train would probably avoid the need for a new St Enoch station. Technically it would be reasonably easy to provide some connections south of Central to run on-street through the city centre to the vicinity of Queen Street, then either terminate there or link up to some routes to the north. But as far as I'm aware that sort of solution for Glasgow is not favoured in any official circles.

 

[NotATrainspott]

Have you got a link to this study?

If that's the thinking at TS then it's really quite concerning. Tram-trains are not and cannot be glorified electric Pacers, and passengers will rightly be less than impressed if someone tries to use them that way. With the bare minimum frequency increase on each of these lines to keep passengers happy, you would have London-style frequencies into this St Enoch station while needing to have the same expensive London-style signalling for the heavy rail services. Only by making it tram-only would you make it cheap to run a sufficient frequency, but it's still quite pointless if you're further away from where people actually want to go.

If people are trying to do as much as they can on a shoestring they would be better off spending the money on buses. Seriously. Instead of wasting money on stupid electric Pacer services you may as well use it to subsidise a proper integrated municipal bus operation which would do far, far more for the city. That municipal bus operator would then provide the integrated ticketing and timetabling needed to provide a base for a tram or metro system.

 

[NotATrainspott]

In which case the proposal is flawed. Tram-trains are significantly more expensive than trains of equivalent floor area, as well as requiring various changes to infrastructure and operating rules that could reduce capacity. So if the proposed route is entirely on segregated railway then a lightweight train similar to the ones being bought by Merseytravel would be a better bet than a tram-train.

If on-street operation in the city centre was acceptable then use of tram-train would probably avoid the need for a new St Enoch station. Technically it would be reasonably easy to provide some connections south of Central to run on-street through the city centre to the vicinity of Queen Street, then either terminate there or link up to some routes to the north. But as far as I'm aware that sort of solution for Glasgow is not favoured in any official circles.

The STPR has three basic options:

• The provision of a new city centre surface station to the east of Glasgow Central linking the rail network to the south and east of the city;
• The provision of a new city centre sub-surface station as part of a tunnel below the city centre linking the north and south rail networks; and/or
• The development of a Metro network across Glasgow comprising a mixture of conversion of heavy rail (e.g. part or all of the Cathcart Circle), lines on existing redundant infrastructure (e.g. Great Western Road / Botanic Gardens), new lines (e.g. Clyde Waterfront) and some on-road or next-to-road sections.

Both of the new city centre station options would provide additional platform capacity in the city centre and permit cross-city services to be provided.

A Metro system could include new stations, improved service frequencies and improved access to and across central Glasgow. The system would be rolled out on a phased basis. The operational concept for the system using proven technology could be expanded to include a new crossing of the Clyde to around the Southern General Hospital and other lines to link areas not currently served by the heavy rail network.

The Metro option is the one which I think has the best business case in the short term. My belief is that such a network could comprise effectively two separate systems operating perpendicular to one another. The north-south network would use high-floor tram trains on at least the Maryhill and Cathcart Circle lines. Initially the focus would be just to relieve the two termini of their shortest-distance services using a short section of street running track through the city centre. The Maryhill line would be far more useful for the city if it had stops between Queen Street and Ashfield, so this track would continue all the way up there through the deprived (i.e. cheap and politically easy) areas north of the city. After it fulfils this initial role then there can be some consideration of adding new street-running branches further out to make the most of the city centre section. Remember, useful branches are cheap to build and would be good ways to generate the revenue needed to fund the scheme in the first place.

The east-west system would be standard five-segment low-floor trams, as heavy rail services are already able to run through the city centre on this axis. Their job would be to take on the buses and relieve the short-distance passenger flows on heavy rail, allowing it to optimise for the longer-distance services beyond the built-up area. Trams along the north bank of the Clyde and along Great Western Road would mean that there wouldn't be a need for more stopping services on both the Singer and Yoker loops, or those services could even be reduced. Both lines could plausibly terminate together at Dalmuir, providing good interchange for trains heading beyond and acting as a natural end point for the tram system. We want densification of the city within this sort of bounds, and a tram would be an excellent stimulant for suitable housing developments.

 

[clc]

Have you got a link to this study?.

No. TS released it under Freedom of Information but never published it as far as I'm aware.