Letter: Missing links

Funding approval for modernisation of Glasgow’s subway is very welcome (your report, 27 March), but this historic 15-station system will only achieve its full potential when linked by convenient interchange stations with the Strathclyde Partnership for Transport/ScotRail suburban rail network now serving areas far outwith the city’s 19th-century suburban boundaries.

The subway’s convenient Partick interchange station link with the north Clydeside electrified network (created during the 1980 modernisation) has certainly been highly successful in generating more passenger usage and undoubtedly contributed to Partick becoming Scotland’s sixth busiest station.

An urgent requirement is for a similar subway-suburban rail interchange at West Street.

Such would offer a more convenient and direct route for passengers from Paisley and other west of Scotland communities, such as Lanarkshire, travelling to employment and education locations in Glasgow’s West End, such as Partick and Hillhead, compared with the present, time-consuming route into Glasgow Central Station and then outwards again from the city centre.

Implementing the long-planned Crossrail route (1.8 miles of existing freight line) directly linking the Paisley and Airdrie–Bathgate–Edinburgh lines is also recognised as the key unifying link between Scotland’s two disjointed and inefficiently fragmented rail systems.

Its subway interchange at West Street and at Glasgow Cross rail station interchange logically linking into the Argyle line below, would deliver a quantum improvement in cross- Scotland commuter travel between Ayrshire/Inverclyde/Renfrewshire – Paisley to Edinburgh/Cumbernauld–Falkirk–Stirling and the North.

If we are really serious about creating a more competitive, comprehensive and convenient public alternative to insatiable demands for more unsustainable car commuting, and demands for urban parking space, completing Crossrail (Scotland’s “missing link”) and the required subway-rail interchanges must be given top priority as part of any coherent and credible “joined-up” transport policy.

K A Sutherland

Dirleton Gate

Glasgow