New Campaign (as reported in the East Lothian Courier)
A campaign calling for the return of a railway
station to Haddington has won the backing of East Lothian’s former MP.
Now, Martin Whitfield, Labour’s East Lothian candidate for the Scottish
Parliament elections in May, has backed the campaign and launched a
petition urging the Scottish Government to reinstate the Haddington
branch line and open a new station in the town.
The petition, which has been backed by local Labour councillors Shamin
Akhtar and John McMillan, refers to Haddington’s rapidly growing
population and economic importance as the county town as the main
rationale for developing rail access.
He said: “Haddington needs more investment in modern new infrastructure
to support this growth and help cope with the increased population and
demands on existing services.
“Reinstating the Haddington branch line and constructing a new rail
station would help solve many of the town’s current transport problems
as well as supporting economic growth.
“Projects like the Borders Railway have demonstrated what can be
achieved to improve rail connectivity and I want to see the same level
of investment in East Lothian.”
A Transport Scotland spokeswoman told the Courier: “Scottish Ministers
are committed to ensuring the railway meets future growth needs and are
willing to consider proposals for improvement works to current stations,
new stations, or reopening existing ones, that arise from a positive
transport appraisal which takes account of the impact on the wider rail
network.
“East Lothian Council has been awarded a total of £90,000 through the
Local Rail Development Fund (LRDF), to help them to carry out their East
Lothian access study.
"This work will assess the transport needs and opportunities within East
Lothian, and includes Haddington within the study remit.
"They have made their case for change which is the first of the three
appraisals in the LRDF process, and East Lothian Council are currently
producing their initial options appraisal, the second appraisal for this
work.
"It is too premature to say whether Haddington station will be re-opened
at this stage of the process, but if East Lothian Council’s appraisal
provides a robust Strategic Business Case we will consider it for
potential future funding through our rail pipeline process.”
Mr Whitfield called on people to sign the petition, which can be
accessed via
www.change.org/haddingtonrail
Reinstatement of Haddington Rail Branch
On 24 January 2006 RAGES gave a presentation on possible sites for a re-opened Haddington rail station to the Haddington and District Community Council. This was reported in a special newsletter.
The Community Council are very much in favour of a rail link being
re-instated to the town.
Our then MSP took place in August 2006 when RAGES met with the then MSP
for East Lothian, John Home Robertson, in Haddington and toured the
possible sites for a station. A full report of this meeting can be found
in The Rages Rag Issue 31.
Unfortunately, before the local councillors could be involved, the
Scottish elections took place.
However, since then, the new councillor with the transport portfolio has
been very active in promoting rail enhancements in East Lothian.
To date he has got RAGES involved in SEStran meetings with the MSPs and
the possibility of the re-opening of Haddington branch is raised there.
It was also been raised again by our MSP at his meeting with the
Minister for Transport, Stewart Stevenson.
At the meeting with the Minister on 13 March 2008, the case for
re-opening the Haddington station was put forward with a short paper
showing options for a station and facilities for park and ride. The
Minister promised to look at the case. More details in
The Rages Rag
Issue 37.
In late 2009, RAGES wrote to East Lothian Council asking if a study could be undertaken to re-instate the branch. The reply was disappointing in that they noted insufficient funds to carry out such a study at this time.
In April 2011, the local rail meeting, hosted by East Lothian Council, agreed to find funds to undertake a technical feasibility study as to whether it would be possible to run extra trains on the existing rail network.
At a subsequent RAGES Committee Meeting, the re-opening was raised again when the three Haddington ward councillors were invited. Unfortunately, only one was able to attend, but the case for re-opening was presented. Michael Veitch, transport portfolio holder, also present suggested that local support would need to be strong before the Council could fund the feasibility study. Further discussion would be held at the next Committee meeting when it was hoped that all three Haddington councillors would be able to attend.
The re-opening of the Haddington rail branch was discussed at the October 2012 local rail study meeting. The Council is keen to gauge local opinion on the Haddington branch and also believes it is important to ascertain the view of the Scottish Government. The local rail meeting was also of the opinion that it was not politic to dilute its current aim of the Edinburgh to Berwick local rail service with the Haddington aim.
A meeting was called by Cllr Veitch in November 2012 to discuss how to go forward with the Haddington rail re-opening.
One of the actions was for RAGES to raise the subject with the Haddington Vision group and to liaise with the community council on ways of gauging the interest of the residents. However, the newly created Haddington Community Development Trust (CDT) has, as one of its concerns, the improvement of transport links in Haddington.
The trust discussed this and Wallyford has been chosen as a bus/rail interchange point with these advantages over Drem or Longniddry:
In conjunction with the CDT we had already some surveys of
commuters had been undertaken, and also had help from Knox Academy pupils in a further
survey.
The results of these surveys gave Prentice Coaches confidence to start
this new route in February 2014, as they believed there was a demand for
a high quality fast transport link to Edinburgh. The combined journey
took a little over 35 minutes
from Haddington High Street to Waverley Station in Edinburgh.
The Rages Rag issue 61
reported on the service.
Despite the returned questionnaires (1400) saying that 25% of the
respondents would definitely use the service, Prentice Coaches was forced to
discontinue the service in August 2014 due to insufficient patronage.
RAGES is looking at other methods to promote its aim of a rail service to Haddington.
Further to the article in The Rages Rag issue 71, East Lothian Council has been awarded funding by Transport Scotland for a study to look at improving rail connections in East Lothian including Haddington and Tranent. It will investigate current trip generators and future commuting trends as well as proposing potential solutions.
RAGES is pleased to announce that we have a new representative for Haddington in Stewart Leslie. Stewart is a Haddington resident and has been a RAGES member since March 1999.
To provide feedback, on 13 March 2019 RAGES, met with the consultants, Peter Brett Associates appointed by East Lothian Council to develop the Scottish Transport Appraisal Group (STAG) Case for Change, primarily concerning the corridor through the west of the county, broadly following the A1 and the East Coast Main Line (ECML) from Haddington westwards, where the majority of journeys converge on the transport network.
A full report can be read at this link.
In May 2019, East Lothian Council published the following report: "East Lothian Access Study Stag Appraisal - Case for Change".
Appendix J "Haddington Branch Line Survey" gives the current thinking.