The Friends of the Far North Line
Cairdean Na Loine Tuath
the campaign group for rail north of
Inverness - lobbying for improved services for the local user, tourist and freight
operator
As rail campaigners we've watched the A9 campaign unfold with a feeling of helplessness. Led by Fergus Ewing MSP, members of the public who've suffered bereavement, and several Scottish newspapers, emotional pressure was used to force the issue, implying pretty directly that the Scottish Government would have blood on its hands if it didn't keep its promise to complete the dualling of the remainder of the A9 between Inverness and Perth. As Pandora notes elsewhere in this issue, "The A9 has not killed a single motorist. Careless motorists have done that." A9 campaigners have not worried about factual accuracy, stating that:
and they have ignored alternative road improvements which would be far cheaper:
For the record it's worth noting that the only logical way to assess a road's danger level is to count accidents per car miles travelled. According to the DfT, using this measure, only three Scottish roads are in the UK top 50 for danger - the A82, A7 and A71. The A68 which is in both England and Scotland is also in the top 50.
The A9 dualling campaign was a test of the Scottish Government's resolve to uphold its own policy, which is modal shift of freight and passengers to rail and a 20% reduction in car kilometres.
The government has failed this first major test spectacularly and the Scottish budget is now saddled with a huge avoidable expense which will inevitably curtail the necessary investment in the railway.
According to The Herald, "Newly released Scottish cabinet papers show then finance secretary John Swinney shared doubts about the project with Alex Salmond and other senior colleagues in August 2008". Mr Swinney characterised the project as "hugely expensive", and at a possible cost in excess of £5000m for the A9, it is hard to see how the Scottish Government has felt able to commit to completion by 2035. Given the fact that Scotland is unable to raise money by borrowing as other countries do, the budget clearly won't stretch far enough for this, a fact borne out by the recent depressing annual Scottish Budget statement.
Perhaps the 2035 promise is being made by the present occupants of ministerial posts in the silent hope that their successors will be brave enough to state the obvious to the Scottish voters and redirect what money there is to some sensible, but far cheaper, interventions on the A9, and to tackling the rail infrastructure deficit properly. So far in recent years the government has been quick to point out that money has been spent on the Highland Main Line, unfortunately the figure was only £57m - this gives some idea of the discrepancy between the government's Highland aspirations for rail and for road. At this decisive moment what we needed from our politicians was vision and consensus, what we saw instead was party political point-scoring in debates and in the media. Given that all parties in Scotland vocally support the notion that climate change can be addressed by modal shift to rail, this is disappointing to say the least.
Meanwhile, the Scottish newspapers came down firmly on the side of road improvements when they knew very well that they should have been campaigning for rail investment. Sadly both newspapers and politicians seem to place their fear of public opinion over their duty.
However the same newspapers have salvaged some credibility by publishing letters giving other views on road spending. Here are three:
Rhodri Griffiths, Alford
Press and Journal (Inverness, Highlands, and Islands)
27 Oct 2023
Sir, - I would like to congratulate The Press and Journal (October 18) on its fair and balanced coverage of the A96 (and A9) dualling debate at the recent SNP autumn conference.
I recognise my opposition to further dualling is at odds with the view of many people in the area, but times have changed a great deal since the policy was floated in the SNP's Grampian region manifesto in 1990.
Back in those days, global warming was recognised as a threat but the devastating reality of mass species extinction and climate catastrophe we now face should really cause local politicians and planners to pause and take stock before resorting to the outdated and ineffective policy of yet more road building. It's been proven over and over again that more road building does not ease congestion - it actually encourages more and more traffic on to already overcrowded roads.
Huntly and Inverurie are already bypassed. Presumably the dualling enthusiasts are also planning to bypass Keith, Elgin, Forres and Nairn. Will these towns actually benefit?
How much more countryside will need to be buried under tarmac in order to achieve this goal? Are the already dualled sections of the A96 inherently safer? Are they less prone to being closed as a result of serious accidents? Is Huntly a more prosperous town since it was bypassed?
Above all, is it really worth spending countless millions on such an environmentally unwise project in order to save a few minutes off the journey time from Aberdeen to Inverness?
Surely it makes far more sense to invest transport infrastructure funding in public transport, and particularly into improving the rail network. On a recent midweek train journey from Insch to Edinburgh, I was taken aback by the number of passengers on the train; scarcely a free seat in all three carriages and a similar level of passenger take-up on the Aberdeen to Edinburgh stage of the journey. This popularity is in spite of hefty prices.
Dualling the railway line between Inverness and Aberdeen would allow for provision of more frequent trains, enabling people to travel in comfort from one city centre to the other or indeed to any of the smaller communities along the line. It would also facilitate the transportation of more freight by rail, thereby getting rid of at least some of the juggernauts churning out diesel fumes and putting lives at risk.
It goes without saying we should be reopening many of the railway lines closed in the Beeching era. The Aberdeen to Peterhead and Fraserburgh line is already envisaged and should be followed by many more.
Of course the Beeching era was the "golden age" of motorway building.
Surely by now we should have learned from the disastrous mistakes of the early 1960s and be preparing to promote and invest in cleaner, safer and sustainable means of getting from A to B.
I'm a bit disappointed that more local SNP members don't currently share this view but, on the other hand, very pleased that the party is open, honest and democratic enough to permit a healthy debate about the future of transport infrastructure in Scotland.
Ian Budd, Bishopbriggs
The Herald on Sunday
5 Nov 2023
[In response to "Out of road 'The people of Scotland want tarmac, not talk'" by Fergus Ewing MSP]
It is very interesting that Fergus Ewing's opinion piece does not mention the far cheaper Swedish 2+1 with wire rope median system when referring to the need to avoid head-on collisions. This design has one continuous lane in each direction, and a middle lane changing direction every few kilometres, with a median barrier separating the two traffic directions. Head-on crashes are eliminated. It will mostly fit into the present single carriageway road space. This, combined with grade-separated junctions, would avoid very many accidents.
Our transport budget is limited, and much of it will be required to achieve the modal shift from road to rail which is Scottish Government policy. It's hard to understand why this solution is not already being seriously considered. Let's hope this changes soon.
Ian Budd, Convener, Friends of the Far North Line
Press and Journal (Inverness, Highlands, and Islands)
15 Nov 2023
[In response to a strange article which compared the percentages of A-roads which are dual carriageway by Scottish area, unsurprisingly showing that the areas with the least population have the lowest figure.]
Sir, - Today's headline "Anger as north worst in UK for lack of dualling" could have been written with railways in mind.
At a time when it is Scottish Government policy to reduce car use in Scotland by 20% by 2030, which is estimated to double rail passenger figures, it is very noticeable that most Highland railways are single track, including all the routes out of the city of Inverness. Single track railways are the equivalent of single track roads, i.e. vehicles can only pass each other at passing places ("loops"). In the 1980s, when it was thought by some that railways were no longer needed, many of the already few loops were removed. In some parts of the Highlands there are up to 24 miles between them. Government policy is also to see a major shift of road freight to rail.
It would be very helpful if the Press & Journal were to campaign as vociferously for the essential investment in Highland railways as it does for roads, for which there is an infinitely weaker case.
Newspapers have campaigned in the past for rail investment. Here is an editorial from the Inverness Courier, 6 December 2016 which is just as relevant now:
It's hard to imagine that anyone who regularly takes the train to and from Inverness would be surprised by the Courier's revelation today that train times are becoming progressively slower between the Highland capital and the Central Belt.
The reality is that the times aren't just slower but the trains run late far too often, are overcrowded and too many times replaced by bus services between Inverness and Perth due to engineering works.
It was eight years ago that the Scottish Government pledged to make the route a top transport priority.
But a recent report by Reform Scotland found that under current proposals, over the next 30 years journey times will be faster from Glasgow to London than from Glasgow to Inverness which is less than half the distance!
That is simply unacceptable. It's not as if the road and air links from Inverness are fantastic and it's just the latest example of the people of the Highlands getting shabby treatment when compared with the rest of Scotland.
Pressure needs to be put on the government to fix this, so it would be nice to see the local councillors, MSPs and MPs taking up the cudgels in the corridors of power.
Campaigners rightly fear that although the upgrade of the Highland Main Line was the government's third transport priority in 2008 - after the Queensferry road bridge and the Edinburgh to Glasgow rail improvement programme - it is slipping way behind.
The aim is to slash journey times to 2 hours 45 minutes with an hourly service by 2025. But the vital 06:50 train from Inverness to Edinburgh will be six minutes slower than it already is from next month, taking 3 hours 18 minutes.
For embattled Highland travellers that is simply adding insult to injury and there are no signs of things improving any time soon. [A Friends of the Far North Line] rail campaigner...hit the nail on the head. "It just seems the government is not putting the money north - we are just getting left behind. We are going to end up with a two-tier railway system in Scotland."
People reading this and using the service heading north from Inverness are getting even shoddier treatment.
Surely it can't be because the vast majority of voters live in the Central Belt - or could it!
On 9 August the Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee launched a consultation to "look at the commitment to dual the A9 and address the on-going safety concerns on the road". The consultation followed a petition submitted by road safety campaigner Laura Hansler, which urged the Scottish Government to fulfil its 2011 promise to fully dual the A9. The committee promised to produce a summary of the feedback it received which is available here as part of the committee's consideration of the petition which at 2 January 2024 is not yet completed.
FoFNL contributed to Transform Scotland's written response which is available on our website and can be accessed form this issue's companion page.
The ongoing debate about Scottish Government transport priorities received a major intervention by Reform Scotland, the independent Scottish think tank on 28 December 2023:
Reform Scotland calls for new Scottish Rail Infrastructure Commission
Reform Scotland today publishes a paper calling on the Scottish Government to set up a Scottish Rail Infrastructure Commission to assess the economic, environmental and social case for improving Scotland's rail infrastructure.
Releasing detailed travel times for journeys in Scotland in its new paper Getting on Track, the think tank reveals a huge number of journeys which are significantly faster by car than they are by train, including:
The paper also shows that while travelling from London to Edinburgh can take as little as 4 hours by train, it can take almost as long again to reach Inverness from the Central Belt.
Commenting, Reform Scotland's Research Director Alison Payne said:
"The Scottish Government deserves credit for having in place a rolling programme of investment in upgrading railway lines, which is expensive and takes a great deal of time and planning. However we have to ask whether these incremental changes are enough.
"We rarely think big enough, or long-term enough, yet on rail infrastructure we must.
"Scotland's rail network has the potential to help address some of the medium- to long-term challenges facing the nation, such as achieving net zero, reducing depopulation and growing the economy. But that potential can only be realised through the sort of ambitious thinking of which we presently see far too little." The link to the full paper is in our companion page and we would urge everyone to take the time to read this through with an open mind - especially if you are an MSP.
Approached for a reaction to Getting on Track, Colin Marr, Chief Executive of the Inverness Chamber of Commerce had this to say:
"I welcome the publication of Getting on Track from Reform Scotland.
"It clearly compares the driving times and rail times between Scotland's major cities and ports. It reinforces the well accepted argument that to encourage less private car and road freight use we need rail times to be significantly less than drive times and it then clearly shows that this is currently only true for a few of our Central Belt and larger cities and that it is not the case for the majority of Scotland's land mass. It also shows the stark contrast in journey times between London and Edinburgh and then Edinburgh to Inverness.
"We support their call for a Scottish Rail Infrastructure Commission but would have liked to see a suggested timetable for its formation and reporting. We would also have liked to see the report discuss rail travel within the Highlands. Scotland doesn't stop at Inverness - it is vital that a future rail commission looks at journey times and the need for rail investment within the Highlands. Modern rail infrastructure would undoubtedly help with business investment and the current problem of depopulation across our region."
Our sense of frustration about rail in the Highlands being sidelined is magnified by the virtual secrecy which surrounds progress on rail investment. A search through the Transport Scotland 'Projects' section leads to a very out-of-date page for each of the three railways. For the HML, completion in 2025 of some modest journey time reductions is described as the "long-term goal of the Highland Mainline enhancements programme" [there is no sign of it happening] and the link to Network Rail's HML page takes you to an apology that "the page you are trying to view does not exist". The same thing happens on the page about Inverness-Aberdeen. The "forthcoming" STPR2 which came out in January 2022 is also mentioned. The Far North Line page still refers to the "Lentran Loop", even though that has been replaced by the proposed "Delmore Loop" of which there is still no news except that NR's cost submission (originally by the summer of 2023) has twice been delayed, currently expected by the end of March 2024.
The feeling that this government is not serious about rail is inescapable.