Proposals for levitating Glasgow-Edinburgh train put to Scottish Government ministers in 2009

Plans for a 500 kilometre per hour monorail between Glasgow and Edinburgh were put before Scottish ministers in 2009, new papers show, before being summarily rejected.

A confidential feasibility study was led by Transport Scotland into the plans, which would have cut journey times to just 18 minutes between the country’s two biggest cities – including a stop at Edinburgh Airport, according to cabinet papers released after 15 years on January 1 by National Records of Scotland.

The train would have been powered by magnetic levitation – or MagLev – technology, which would suspend the carriages in the air using electromagnets.

The paper was presented to the cabinet – led by then first minister Alex Salmond – by John Swinney, who was serving as finance secretary.

After initially being delayed by a week, the cabinet – still dealing with the after-effects of the 2008 financial crash – did not progress the plans.

According to the study, the project would have been funded by a £200m annual “availability payment” over 30 years, costing taxpayers around £6bn in total, not including the likely “significant up-front development costs”, which may have been as much as £2bn.

Despite potential economic benefits, the cost caused concern among the small number of officials who were aware of the proposals.

“Finance directorate have been made aware of this proposition (on a very limited circulation),” the report said.

“While they are not in a position to verify the exact level of cost that would fall on the Scottish Government’s revenue budget, they point out that a commitment of this magnitude could only be met through substantial cuts in established programmes.

“They confirm the view… that there is no prospect of absorbing the costs of this project within the transport budget.”

The initial pitch appears to have been made to the Government by a company called UK Ultraspeed, which was hoping for a memorandum of understanding with ministers on the project going ahead.

The company urged secrecy from the Government, with the report saying: “At this early stage, it was agreed with UK Ultraspeed that the details of the project would not be widely discussed.

“For this reason, Transport Scotland has progressed the project confidentially.

“Even across the Scottish Government, details of the project have been discussed only at the highest level.”

When the plans were eventually put before cabinet in the spring of 2009, ministers agreed it was technologically feasible but voiced concerns about the cost.

“The cabinet agreed that there should be no public funding to develop this proposal further but that other options for taking this forward could be explored,” the report said.

No further mention of MagLev technology was made in the documents for 2009.