It often amazes me how difficult it is for Governments to find money for public transport maintenance improvement.
The Scottish Government is not awash with money (although it is awash with it in comparison to what it will be next year!) but it still managed to find the money for the M74 connection on the South Side of Glasgow, that is at this moment laying waste to another part of the city. This few miles of motorway at best duplicates roads all ready in existence and at worst makes another pedestrian no mans land near the centre of Glasgow that creates more pollution and encourages more road traffic. This is rather ironic considering in Birmingham, another city which climbed on the city centre motorways bandwagon of the late 1960s and 1970s is in the process of removing some of them, and so is doing the exact opposite of what Glasgow continues to have done to it.
Yet it could not find the money for the Glasgow Airport Rail Link which was only a few miles of rail line which would have improved the infrastructure, reduced pollution and provided a real improvement to the public transport infrastructure. It is especially ironic given that the rail improvements required between Glasgow Central and Paisley St James in order to connect the GARL have actually all ready been completed. Some of you may have noticed the 2 new platforms in Glasgow Central station which are the most obvious sign of this 'improvement'. It is now only an 'improvement' as the actual main improvement has not been built but a lot of money spent.
We do live in a strange world!
http://www.christophercrawford.110mb.com
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