Further correspondence

St Andrews resident Allan Chalmers claims that he is ‘reliably informed’ that TayPlan has already advised the Scottish Government that there should be no reference to a railway, on the grounds of practicability and the bus service being deemed sufficient, and this report was published in April. However that was before the publication of the Tata Steel findings in May, and the indications since from Transport Scotland and Scotrail are that they think otherwise. As to the bus service, readers might recall that not at all long before the decision to restore the Alloa line was taken, the powers-that-be were maintaining that Alloa did not need a railway, and that buses would do; of course, that rail service is now carrying many more passengers than was predicted. Nevertheless, Mr Chalmers describes a railway to St Andrews as ‘unnecessary, non-viable and outrageously costly.’

P. Rogers is also concerned about the loss of car-parking, and describes the whole idea of a railway as ‘madness’, when the main concern of St Andrews is getting a new school. However, the two are by no means mutually exclusive. P. Rogers also asks how much it would cost (it’s in the report - £76M) and wants to know who is paying for ‘all this madness’. Not P. Rogers, as the study was commissioned by Starlink and funded by donations, not by public funds.