Edinburgh to Glasgow Improvement Programme

The Edinburgh to Glasgow Improvement Programme or EGIP is an initiative started by the Scottish Government to upgrade the main railway lines between Edinburgh and Glasgow by 2016. It is expected to cost around £650 million.

Original plans

As originally announced in 2006, the project would have cost £1 billion and would have involved upgrading of railways within much of the Scottish Central Belt between Edinburgh and Glasgow. Some of the general and more specific aims of the original programme included:

• Service frequencies between Edinburgh and Glasgow Queen Street increased from four trains per hour to six per hour, with the fastest journey time being reduced to 35 minutes. This would have resulted in a total of 13 trains per hour between the two cities across all routes;
• Electrification of the Glasgow to Edinburgh via Falkirk Line, the Croy Line, the Edinburgh to Dunblane Line, the Grangemouth branch, the Alloa branch and the Cumbernauld Line;
• Construction of turnback sidings at Abbeyhill Junction and Croy;
• Construction (and electrification) of the Garngad Chord, near Springburn, thus allowing Glasgow-Cumbernauld services to use the North Clyde Line into Queen Street Low Level, thus freeing up capacity on the High Level station.
• Remodelling of Greenhill Junction to provide a non-conflicting junction;
• Upgrading of overbridges along the routes involved in order to provide sufficient clearance for electrification wires;
• Provision of traction stabling facilities at Stirling; and
• Construction of a rail-tram interchange at Gogar, and a new chord line at Dalmeny to allow trains from the west to serve the new station.

Reduced plans

On 4 July 2012 the Scottish Minister for Transport and Housing Keith Brown announced that the project had been significantly scaled down, with the estimated budget cut to £650 million. The electrification will now be limited to the Edinburgh to Glasgow Main Line only, and there will be no improvement to service frequencies and consequently no need for the junction remodelling, turnback sidings or the Dalmeny chord line. The cuts were criticised by business and environmental groups. Sustainable transport campaign group Transform Scotland described the cuts as 'a major step backwards' and suggested that the government's concurrent decision to bring forward a £3 billion project to dual the A9 road demonstrated a 'perverse set of priorities'.

The basis for the revised plans was an engineering review "Edinburgh Glasgow Improvement Programme Strategic Review" commissioned by Transport Scotland from Jacobs Engineering UK Ltd. This review was completed in May 2012 and an edited version was published by Transport Scotland on 18 September 2012. This review promoted a revised plan for four 8-carriage trains per hour between Glasgow and Edinburgh, involving a major rebuild and the lengthening of platforms at Queen St high level station. The new proposal is at development stage GRIP 1, whereas the previous EGIP scheme was already at stage GRIP 4. This means a lot of detailed work still has to be done before the revised scheme can be implemented. Technical work which still needs to be carried out includes investigations of moving pointwork into the tunnel and the acceptability of using co-acting signals, as the signal sighting distances on some of the extended platforms will be below normal standards. It is clear that this major revision of the EGIP proposals will introduce considerable delay to the project.

It was reported that the project was delayed for up to three years due to the need to negotiate for the demolition of the west wing of the Millennium Hotel and works on Winchburgh Tunnel.