Scottish Parliamentary Elections Improved Train Services for The Highlands

Editor's note: the text below was sent to the relevant prospective MSPs prior to the Scottish Elections.

The Friends of the Far North Line (FoFNL) calls upon candidates standing in constituencies in the Highland Council area to publicly support its campaign for an hourly train service between Inverness and Tain. Proposals were delivered to Transport Scotland in September, 2010 showing how such a service could be achieved. FoFNL believes that an improvement in service frequency would be the first phase of major improvements to the Far North Line and would see a substantial modal transfer from road to rail. Subsequent to this, a case would then be able to be made for journey time improvements, which would have benefits not only for rail travel between Inverness and Easter Ross but also for longer distance travellers to and from Sutherland and Caithness.

However we couldn't help but introduce a little light humour for you into the situation, before spelling out the serious considerations to which we hope our politicians will face.

It should be apparent that the CONStrained single track lines of the Highlands need the application of a good deal of LABOUR and finance to give the GREEN light to develop infrastructure capable of supporting a more LIBERAL frequency of services to achieve the NATIONAL objective of greater connectivity between SCOTTISH cities and the likely NATIONAL all-PARTY imperative to carry significantly more freight by rail and less by road once the peak oil scenario kicks in. This, as we are already seeing, can happen very suddenly maybe even during the next Parliament.