COMMUNITY INVITED TO HAYMARKET PUBLIC MEETING

Monday 16 Jan 2012

COMMUNITY INVITED TO HAYMARKET PUBLIC MEETING

Region & Route:: Scotland’s Railway: Scotland

Network Rail will host a Public Meeting at 7pm on Tuesday 17 Jan in St Georges West Church, Shandwick Place, Edinburgh to inform the local community in Haymarket about the plans to upgrade the station.

The meeting offers the local community the opportunity to find out when and how the work will take place, see more detailed plans for the redevelopment and ask the project team any questions they may have about the project face to face, as well as offering their views on the plans for the station

The meeting is part of the Central Scotland wide Edinburgh Glasgow Improvement Programme (EGIP) consultation on the proposed £1bn investment in upgrading the rail infrastructure. The proposal will see works at Haymarket station to redevelop the facility in order to better serve customers and create a station of which the city can be proud

Network Rail will invest £25m at Haymarket to create a fully accessible station as well as an integrated train, tram, bus and taxi transport hub. Work on the project will be delivered by contractor Morgan Sindall and will commence in May. The main refurbishment works are expected to be completed by winter 2013.

Martin Murray, Senior Programme Manager, Network Rail said: “Keeping the community informed is an important part of any infrastructure project, particularly where there is a high density of population close to the work site and construction will involve a significant amount of night time working.

“It is only right that we let the local people know what to expect and when and to give them the opportunity to voice their concerns with us directly. We hope that many people will take the chance to come along and find out about the plans for Haymarket first hand.”

EGIP will also see the electrification of 350km of the existing rail network in the central belt, including the main Edinburgh Waverley-Glasgow Queen Street line, and provide opportunities to increase services and reduce journey times on routes between Alloa and Dunblane and Edinburgh and Glasgow.

Handling four million passengers a year, Haymarket is Scotland fourth busiest station and passenger numbers are expected to reach 10m by 2025. Work will begin on site in spring 2012 and enhancements will include:

• Refurbishing the existing station building and constructing a new modern concourse to the west of the existing building.

• Constructing a new access bridge, with DDA compliant lifts and escalators, to all platform levels

• Renewing the platform canopies.

Notes to editors

EGIP was launched by Transport Minister Keith Brown in June 2011 and is one of Scotland’s biggest consultation exercises covering or benefitting 9 local authority areas which are home to around two-thirds of Scotland’s population.

As part of the public consultation exercise, the project team held hundreds of events across the communities which will benefit from the project and publicise the works through billboards, newspaper and radio advertising and distributing around half a million leaflets.

EGIP is being funded by Transport Scotland on behalf of the Scottish Government, with the new infrastructure financed through Network Rail’s Regulatory Asset Base.

The programme is expected to deliver a range of benefits by 2016 including a fastest journey time of 37 minutes on the main Edinburgh Waverley-Glasgow Queen Street route and increase service levels on all routes between the two cities to 13 services per hour.

EGIP will deliver:

Increase service levels on all routes between the two cities to 13 services per hour
Introduce new and increased service opportunities between Edinburgh and Glasgow on all routes - with a fastest journey time of 37 minutes
Introduce new and increased service opportunities between Alloa / Dunblane and Glasgow - reducing journey times by up to 10 minutes.
Introduce new and increased service opportunities between Dunblane and Edinburgh - reducing journey times by up to five minutes
Create a new rail/tram interchange station at Gogar (Edinburgh Gateway) facilitating access to Edinburgh airport and the surrounding area
Transform Haymarket station into a modern interchange facility
Provide additional capacity for services between Edinburgh and Fife and the North East of Scotland
Electrify eight routes in the central belt, or 350km of the existing rail network.

Contact information

Passengers / community members
Network Rail national helpline
03457 11 41 41

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Please visit National Rail Enquiries

Journalists
Network Rail press office - Scotland
0141 555 4109
mediarelations@networkrail.co.uk

About Network Rail

We own, operate and develop Britain's railway infrastructure; that's 20,000 miles of track, 30,000 bridges, tunnels and viaducts and the thousands of signals, level crossings and stations. We run 20 of the UK's largest stations while all the others, over 2,500, are run by the country's train operating companies.

Usually, there are almost five million journeys made in the UK and over 600 freight trains run on the network. People depend on Britain's railway for their daily commute, to visit friends and loved ones and to get them home safe every day. Our role is to deliver a safe and reliable railway, so we carefully manage and deliver thousands of projects every year that form part of the multi-billion pound Railway Upgrade Plan, to grow and expand the nation's railway network to respond to the tremendous growth and demand the railway has experienced - a doubling of passenger journeys over the past 20 years.

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