Greer Gives Cautious Welcome to Milngavie Station work
Green MSP Ross Greer has given a cautious welcome to the announcement that work is to start on improvements at Milngavie station. Network Rail have announced that more than £5m will be invested in increasing the length of platforms to allow trains to have more time between arrival and departure. The work will start in July and last for five months.
The line to Milngavie remains the worst performing in Scotland, with just 34.5% of trains arriving on time in the last year. Local Green MSP Ross Greer has led the campaign to fix these problems since his election in 2016. In 2018 Greer commissioned an expert report calling for the single-track line to be redualled, and negotiated a major commitment from the Scottish Government in this year’s budget to fund the next stage of work towards this.
Greer, Scottish Green MSP for the West of Scotland, commented:
“Investment which will improve the line’s woeful performance is certainly welcome but Network Rail need to explain exactly what improvements they think this will result in and how they expect the upgraded platforms to be used. I’m particularly concerned that extending the platforms to hold 9 carriages could mean more use of crowded 3-carriage trains at peak times, the opposite of what we need once we’re in the post-pandemic normal”
“At best, this is a relatively small change which will not fundamentally resolve the problems local commuters have been facing for years. As we’ve proven before, only redualling the track will address this problem, that’s why I negotiated hard to include progress towards in this year’s Scottish budget.
“People are fed up of being told that small changes like this are going to solve the problem. First it was moving the platform at Westerton, then using the second platform at Milngavie and altering the timetable by a couple of minutes. These changes have each made slight improvement but the line is still the worst in Scotland. Welcome as they are, these small incremental tweaks are becoming a distraction from the redualling solution which is at hand, and which I will continue working to achieve.”