COUNCILLOR HITS BACK IN KINTORE STATION ROW

The SNP Council Group has hit back at claims from the Lib Dem MSP for the neighbouring constituency at a lack of progress on a station for Kintore.

The Kintore representative has been supporting the community in its quest for a new railway station and has revealed the considerable amount of work carried out by NESTRANS – the North-east Transport Partnership – which actually has four Lib Dem councillors on its Board, one of whom is Council Leader Anne Robertson. This includes:

• the original STAG assessment of Crossrail
• a timetabling study
• a preliminary design layout including rail issues
• a car park and access design

This took the project to a position where it was shown that a station was viable in terms of usage, fit to the rail timetable and cost - when linked to the overall Scottish Government commitment to upgrade Aberdeen to Inverness rail line.

They said:

"This is a very embarrassing own-goal for Mike Rumbles. NESTRANS have been doing a power of work in moving the Kintore Station project forward on a cross-party basis. Clearly, Mr Rumbles has not bothered to speak to any of the NESTRANS officials or Board members, which includes several from his own party.

"Scottish Government have said that the Aberdeen to Inverness line is one of their 4 top priority projects (including Forth Crossing, Edinburgh to Glasgow rail improvements and Central belt to Inverness rail improvements).

"Transport Scotland have now instructed Network Rail to take the Aberdeen to Inverness rail improvements forward through their design and assessment processes. This was instructed last autumn and we understand that this phase of work will be completed in a year so results should be available this autumn.

"We very much support this cross-party, Multi-Agency approach being used to progress the Kintore Rail Halt. It's just a pity that Mr Rumbles has once again waded into something for his own narrow political ends when it's not even in his constituency."