Shameful U-turn on rail project

IT’S an own-goal blunder by John Swinney to whine about lack of borrowing powers for desirable transport improvement projects, whilst viciously scrapping much of the central Scotland rail electrification improvement programme already negotiated through Network Rail’s Regulated Asset Base funding mechanism, available “without ­prejudice” to other capital investment plans (News, 19 August).

Reneging on this Network Rail electrification agreement, only days after the Transport Minister confirmed the whole project was “on track/on budget for delivery by 2016” is a shameful U-turn of epic proportions, unparalleled in the history of Scotland’s railways.

Other Scottish Government broken promises over previously planned rail improvement projects, include betrayal of a “pledge” for 2012 upgrading of the current primitive single track line to Inverness, abandoning the planned rail links to Edinburgh and Glasgow Airports, scrapping Aberdeen’s Crossrail project and the perverse refusal to implement the long planned Crossrail route through Glasgow (Scotland’s “missing link”).

The 50 per cent mileage curtailment of Scottish Government’s “promised” central Scotland flagship rail electrification plan cruelly contrasts with the UK Government’s visionary commitment, intimated just ten days later, to an unprecedented rail investment programme of widespread electrification and upgrading throughout England and Wales.

Ken Sutherland, Bearsden