SCOTLAND’S third busiest railway station is set for a major expansion after a £112 million tender was issued to transform the station to cope with increased passenger numbers.
Glasgow Queen Street hosts 20 million passengers every year, with this figure tipped to rise by an extra eight million over the next 15 years.
Work will include demolishing Consort House, removing the canopy over the footway in Dundas Street and redeveloping the station concourse. The station’s platforms and concourse are also to be extended to accommodate the “faster, longer, greener” electric trains being introduced as part of the Edinburgh-Glasgow Improvement Programme (EGIP).
Redevelopment work is due for completion in 2019.
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.
“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.”
