Capital's south suburban rail line could re-open in three years

The E-Rail group said it had the financial backing to re-introduce passenger services on the route which links Gorgie, Morningside and Craigmillar with Waverley and Haymarket.

Passenger trains last ran on the "south sub" 40 years ago, when the line was closed as part of the Beeching cuts, although it is still used for freight.

There has been continued pressure over the past decade to re-open the line, although money has always proved the stumbling block.

But yesterday, Professor George Hazel, a director of the E-Rail consortium, said they believed they now had the 25 million needed to make the scheme work.

E-Rail was launched in January 2000, with the aim of re-opening the line, largely financed with contributions from developers able to charge high rates to sell or rent homes or offices close to the route.

Prof Hazel, a former director of city development with Edinburgh City Council, said the consortium had carried out some detailed calculations. "I think we have got the funding together. We think we can do it purely through the private sector and capturing this land gain," he said. "We have had meetings with the council over the past few weeks and we think we can make it work."

The re-opened line would see trains travelling between Waverley and Haymarket via stations at Gorgie, Craiglockhart, Morningside, Blackford or Newington, Cameron Toll, Craigmillar, Niddrie, Kinnaird and Brunstane.

Studies have claimed that if trains were to run every 15 minutes, the line could attract between 9,000 and 13,500 people every day.

Professor Hazel said the consortium still had to talk to ScotRail and Railtrack, but he insisted: "The basic structure of most of the stations is there, the line is in good condition and the bridges don’t need to be altered, although platforms would need to be refurbished."

The Scottish Parliament’s transport and environment committee supports the re-opening of the line.

In its report on the rail industry, the cross-party committee of MSPs said priority should be given to improving capacity at Waverley within the next five years to allow a growth in commuter trains, such as the south sub and extra services from West Lothian and Fife. But Prof Hazel said: "We don’t need to wait for that to happen. We have a way forward using the current layout and existing train paths.

"We are confident we can do this."

Angus MacKay, the Edinburgh South MSP, welcomed the moves towards re-opening the line. He said: "We’re absolutely delighted the transport and environment committee has demonstrated the Parliament’s commitment to the south sub.

"If those who are proposing to re-open the link feel they can do it within the five-year target set by parliament, so much the better.

"The south sub represents an opportunity to get traffic off the roads and provide a reliable rail service feeding into the city centre and helping people in the suburbs on the south side of Edinburgh."

Edinburgh’s transport leader, Andrew Burns, said consultants were due to start work next month on a 1.5 million final feasibility study of the options for the line.

And he said one of the issues to be addressed was whether a re-opened line should be light rather than heavy rail, so it could link in with plans for new tram routes in other parts of the capital.

But Prof Hazel said E-Rail’s plans for the line assumed the service would be conventional trains for the time being at least.

He said: "It is heavy rail. What we are saying is, let’s get this up and running. In five or ten years we may have trams running round it, and that would be fine, but in the meantime we can do this over the next three or four years. Let’s get on with it now."