[2][3] Since the 1970s, it has been widely recognised that one of the main weaknesses of the railway network in Greater Glasgow is that rail services from the south (which would normally terminate at Central main line station) cannot bypass Glasgow city centre and join the northern railway network which terminates at Glasgow Queen Street station, and vice versa for trains coming from the north.
At present, rail users who wish to travel across Glasgow have to disembark at either Central or Queen Street and traverse the city centre by foot, or by road.
The proposed Crossrail initiative involves electrifying and reopening the City Union Line for regular passenger use in conjunction with new filler sections of track, which are planned to connect the North Clyde, Ayrshire, and Kilmarnock and East Kilbride suburban routes, therefore allowing running of services through the centre of Glasgow in a North-South axis.
[6] The scheme has been heavily pushed by Strathclyde Partnership for Transport (SPT) for many years and a £500,000 study was commissioned by the Scottish Executive in 2003 to investigate the feasibility and costs of the link.
The Route Utilisation Strategy for Scotland, published in March 2007, again omitted the Glasgow Crossrail scheme from its recommendations.