Media centre

Tuesday 29 Dec 2015

Invitation to tender issued for £112m Queen Street station transformation

Region & Route:

Scotland’s Railway: Scotland

The transformation of one of Scotland’s most important railway stations, Glasgow Queen Street, has moved a step closer after a £112m tender was issued for its rebuild.

Scotland’s third busiest station, with 20m passengers a year, Glasgow Queen Street needs to expand to meet predicted growth to 28m passengers by 2030.

The station’s platforms and concourse also need to be extended to accommodate the faster, longer, greener electric trains being introduced to Scotland’s railway as part of the £742m Edinburgh-Glasgow Improvement Programme (EGIP).

Due for completion in 2019, the redevelopment will create a landmark, modern station which reflects Queen Street’s role as a gateway to the city and as an important departure point for visitors heading north and east.

The scope of the project will include:

• Demolition of the Millennium Hotel’s 1970s extension above the station
• Demolition of Consort House
• Removal of the canopy over the footway in Dundas Street
• Redevelopment of the station concourse, south and west façades, including reconstruction and extension of station buildings
• Improved station entrances at Dundas Street and George Square
• New lighting and public address systems
• New ticket office and staff accommodation block
• Construction of extended platforms to accommodate eight-car trains.

Phil Verster, managing director of the ScotRail Alliance, said: “This is another tremendously exciting step forward in our plans to transform Scotland’s railway. We recently announced our largest ever Train Improvement Plan, which will deliver new trains, thousands of extra seats and great facilities such as at-seat power points and enhanced Wi-Fi across our fleet.

“Today’s we are confirming that one of our busiest and most important stations will also be transformed, making it larger and with much better facilities for our growing number of customers.

“Scotland’s railway is about more than running metal boxes up and down the tracks. We are all about using trains to connect people with jobs, businesses with customers and communities with more opportunities to grow and prosper. The changes we are making in the coming years will make sure that we have a modern fleet, running on improved infrastructure to and from world-class stations. That is a rail network we can all be proud of.”

Rodger Querns, programme director for the Edinburgh Glasgow Improvement Programme, added: “This is further good progress in the delivery of EGIP. We have already successfully completed a number of key elements of EGIP including the electrification of the Cumbernauld line and Haymarket station and are on the ground across the Edinburgh-Glasgow railway preparing the line for electrification and building Edinburgh Gateway Interchange at Gogar, where we are also making good progress.

“We look forward to delivering this challenging, but exciting project that will realise huge improvements for passengers.”

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Notes to editors:

With passenger numbers through Queen Street set to grow by nearly 10m over the next 15 years, this project will deliver a larger, purpose-built facility to meet the needs of 21st Century Scotland while retaining the best of the station’s Victorian character.

Funded by the Scottish Government, EGIP will see the main Edinburgh-Glasgow, via Falkirk High, line electrified by the end of 2016 in the first phase of a rolling programme of electrification across central Scotland.

As part of the project a new fleet of 70 Hitachi Class 385 electric trains will be rolled out by December 2018 on a number of routes – allowing ScotRail to run trains of up to eight carriages on the main Edinburgh-Glasgow line once the new Queen Street is complete.

EGIP will shorten journey times and increase capacity on some of Scotland busiest services.

Once the tendering exercise is complete, the contract will be awarded in autumn 2016.

Work to upgrade the track in Queen Street Tunnel will begin in late March 2016. An announcement on the impact of this work on customers will be made in early January.