Transport to and from Glasgow Airport has been a long running issue for Glaswegians and for the council.
Our airport is one of the few major airports in the UK not to boast some kind of rail link, with Manchester Airport featuring a full rail station and Edinburgh accessible by tram.
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Recently, Glasgow City Council decided to scrap plans to build a tram train link from Central Station, largely due to capacity issues with the service and regular Scotrail trains. More recently still, Leader of the Council, Susan Aitken put the final nail in the coffin when she described it as “dead” .
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With the preferred option suddenly rejected and the project due to be operational by 2025, Glasgow Live has gained access to a summary report presented to Glasgow City Council.
The Cabinet Report on the Airport Access Project, obtained through Freedom of Information, presents the remaining options for transit to Glasgow Airport, their costs, benefits and what is still to be learnt.
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Glasgow City Council’s official position is a preference for Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) pods from the airport to Paisley Gilmour Street and then onto a train. However, two road based bus routes are also in contention.
As the previous favourite, it is worth measuring each option up against the tram train. At a glance, the tram train would have taken 18 minutes to complete its journey time and was estimated to cost £138,312,542. The report also estimates that the tram train would take a 7.8% passenger share from the airport by 2037.
However, this passenger load shares already compares poorly to other airports similar to Glasgow, whose heavier rail networks take 13 % to 19%.
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The newly favoured PRT system would take 17 minutes between Glasgow city centre and the airport, with a change at Paisley Gilmour Street included in that calculation. It is estimated, though, that PRT would only account for a 6.2% passenger share.
With PRT only recently becoming the new preferred option, there is a lot that still needs to be learned about the system. A new survey, which would cost between £500,000 and £600,000, still needs to consider issues such as wait time, passenger capacity, available system providers and how to configure Paisley Gilmour Street to accommodate the new system.
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Interestingly, the council is technically still considering two different bus transit links to and from the airport. Bus via Fastlink and Bus via hard shoulder both remain metrics in the council’s report. However, both options take over 45 minutes in journey time and deal with around 1% of the passenger share, so it is unlikely that they could replace rail based models.
Overall, there are still some quite serious question marks over key elements of plans to link Glasgow Airport to the city. The end of the train tram option has left PRT as the preferred route and, on current measures, it seems like a logical and speedy solution.
However, the fact that a further £500,000+ report is required to estimate basic information such as wait time or capacity, means that the delivery deadline of 2025 is looking like more and more of a challenge.
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