Maglev: The superfast Edinburgh-Glasgow train that never was

Imagine zipping between Glasgow and Edinburgh in only 18 minutes.

For regular commuters between the two cities, it might sound like the stuff of fiction, but the prospect was touted as a serious possibility by developers seeking Scottish Government backing during the first SNP government.

Private players wanted to create a Shanghai-style maglev (magnetic levitation) system to serve Scotland’s bustling inter-city route.

Under the plan, four shuttles per hour would run in each direction, with stops offered at Edinburgh Airport. At speeds of around 300mph, it would have provided a much quicker alternative for time-pressed travellers, whose journeys currently take around 50 minutes at best by ScotRail.

And there were hopes that it could have been running by 2018, providing quieter, lower emissions transit. But with an estimated price tag of £2bn, the plan never left the station.

Now archived cabinet papers show the first SNP-led Scottish Government did carry out a feasibility study on whether or not to pursue the superfast system.

A paper prepared for Alex Salmond’s cabinet shows Transport Scotland undertook confidential analysis of the maglev proposal, including hush-hush talks with proponent UK Ultraspeed. In a report set for discussion in March 2009, ministers were advised that it had been agreed that “the details of the project would not be widely discussed”.

The document, released for the first time by National Records of Scotland as part of a rolling 15-year declassification programme, states that “Transport Scotland has progressed the project confidentially” and “even across the Scottish Government, details of the project have been discussed only at the highest level”. While the finance directorate was made aware of the proposition, this was “on a very limited circulation” and was not “replicated across the Scottish Government more generally”.

The study was carried out at a time when the future of public transport was high on the political agenda. HS1 had opened between London and the Channel tunnel in 2003 and in 2005 UK Ultraspeed submitted a proposal for a London-to-Scotland service which was geared towards the same market as the mooted HS2 scheme. Then-prime minister Tony Blair was initially said to be supportive and, prior, to the 2007 Holyrood election, Labour finance minister Tom McCabe backed a Glasgow-Edinburgh maglev, suggesting it could boost businesses, effectively joining the two cities “into one economic powerhouse”.

Meanwhile, a replacement for the Forth Road Bridge – the Queensferry Crossing – had been agreed, as had Edinburgh’s tram system, and there were calls to create the Borders rail link and provide lines serving Glasgow and Edinburgh international airports.

Before the SNP’s election win, the party’s then-transport spokesperson Kenny MacAskill had called a Scottish maglev “pie in the sky” and suggested focusing on improvements to the existing rail network before pursuing high-speed alternatives.

But after taking office, then-finance and sustainable growth secretary John Swinney invited his cabinet colleagues to consider the findings of an initial feasibility study on maglev.

Scottish ministers would have had the power to green light such a system, the report said, and the minutes of the cabinet’s discussion state that the project “appeared to be feasible from a technological standpoint” and could be paid for over 30 years. But there was “currently no financial provision for these payments” and, “although the innovative nature of the proposal had presentational attractions”, the brakes were put on the whole idea. “The cabinet agreed that there should be no public funding to develop this proposal further”, the records show.

The feasibility study noted that previous work led by regional agencies Strathclyde Partnership for Transport (SPT) and Sestran, which serves the south of Scotland, had examined the possibility of a Glasgow-Edinburgh maglev link in 2006, but “maglev traction was not recommended” because finding a way to accommodate a terminus in each city “was not possible in the medium term”. And, with Blair’s initial enthusaism having waned, “the UK Government appear to have ruled out maglev technology”, meaning any Scottish scheme would be “unable to connect with” HS2.

Could maglev have been a magic bullet for Scotland, transforming both travel and the economy? Economic analysis suggested potential gross benefits of £4bn per year, with £3bn resulting from “transport efficiency” and £1bn in additional benefits to the wider economy. “The scheme could contribute significant net benefits to the Scottish economy”, it was found, but it was warned that “unresolved issues relating to land take” could increase the overall cost and the project was not without “some risk”.

Shanghai’s version covers a 30km distance in just eight minutes, supporting transit to and from Shanghai Pudong International Airport. With a cruising speed of 268mph, it was for a time the fastest commercial train service, but has since slowed to a mere 186mph. Built with German know-how, it was predated by the low-speed Birmingham maglev, which was a world first when it opened in 1984. But novelty alone couldn’t sustain the service, which linked the local airport and train station, and it hit the buffers 11 years later.

The Scottish feasibility study noted that the “Edinburgh/Glasgow metropolitan region” was home to 63 per cent of the population and generated 67 per cent of national GDP. “The two cities are working to make central Scotland a globally-important centre of economic activity”, the report said, and a “fast, efficient, high-quality transportation system” with good regional connections is needed to support this.

UK Ultraspeed, the firm fuelling the maglev drive, proposed that the £2bn construction costs would be met through German multinationals, with the Scottish Government making an “availability payment” for three decades thereafter to repay that funding. The PPP-style arrangement would have seen an estimated £200m in ticket sales used to make the repayments.

Those passengers, of course, would have to come from somewhere. The cost of taking passengers off of ScotRail services was also considered, and “considerable criticism” was expected from both franchise holder First Group and track operator Network Rail. “Our assessment indicates that the franchise would see a loss in revenue in 2008 prices of over £40m per annum,” Transport Scotland noted, and maglev would also come into “direct competition” with Edinburgh’s trams thanks to its proposed airport link.

The maglev discussion came about six months before cabinet agreed the cancellation of the Glasgow Airport Rail Link, which had considerable regional backing. Swinney took the matter to cabinet two days before he was set to announce it to the public in his budget statement on 17 September 2009, citing “affordability” as the “key factor”.

The project would have linked Glasgow Airport to Glasgow Central Station and it had been hoped that this would have been in place for the 2014 Commonwealth Games in the city, but costs had risen and the decision would save £60m in 2010-11 alone, Swinney said.