THE railways are the bringers of change. They helped to drive the Industrial Revolution as demand for coal and iron for railway construction in turn gave access to markets and transport for people in an expanding cycle of economic growth. They helped to change the very geography of our country as towns grew up where proximity to railway stations gave people opportunities for commuting and enjoying their leisure time. Indeed, the railways can make the extraordinary claim that they changed time itself across Great Britain as individual towns and cities had to standardise their timekeeping to align themselves with railway schedules.

Much of this may sound like it’s in the past. But there is an even more exceptional set of circumstances happening right here and now for the railways. Passenger usage has expanded hugely. Rail remains the single most efficient method of public transport in terms of reducing carbon emissions.

Getting connected to the rail network still offers huge economic benefits for towns and improving connections still provides further growth opportunities for our cities. If you want to see the monument to the train, then do no more than look around you.

Glasgow itself is a city built on our railroads. It is criss-crossed by its own steel arteries, which take people around the most extensive urban rail network outside of London. It connects Scotland’s biggest city and economic powerhouse to the rest of the country and beyond to England. It is the place where lines meet and people mix, where commerce lives and culture thrives. Glasgow is a city of the trains.

Indeed, at the height of this great city’s industrial power, we built a quarter of all the world’s locomotives. Just as Clyde-built ships plied a global trade on the oceans, so trains from Glasgow stopped at the world’s stations.

This is all an exciting and positive story. Many other cities look enviously on at what Glasgow has got and what Glasgow has done.

But there is also another and less impressive side to this. For there are real constraints within the city’s rail infrastructure which are now putting obstacles in the way of Glasgow’s growth. There is a corresponding need to improve capacity and reduce pinch points in the network. We must plan now for the future and we can’t afford to waste time or resources.

Fortunately, there are some well-planned and readily deliverable projects already available which can make a huge difference to Glasgow and its rail network. Foremost amongst them is one called Crossrail. This would basically forge the missing link in our local rail network for journeys which currently have to switch between lines from the south that come into Glasgow Central and ones from the north that use Queen Street. It would allow passengers to travel directly from Ayr to Edinburgh, for instance. Crossrail would involve both the upgrading of some existing line and the construction of some new line. It would also see the creation of new stations at High Street, Glasgow Cross and the Gorbals and an interchange with the Subway at West Street. Plans and costings for this work have been in place for some years. It is without doubt a real winner and one that Glasgow richly deserves.

At the moment, passengers have to get from one station to another on foot or by bus or taxi in order to connect up their journey across Glasgow. For many of them, that would be a thing of the past with Crossrail.

At the moment, we have disused or under-used parts of the rail infrastructure in Glasgow. These would be transformed into assets for new use as part of Crossrail.

At the moment, we have big regeneration ambitions for the East End, Gorbals and Tradeston. These can be bigger still with Crossrail adding its weight to the work already going on in these areas.

The thing about Crossrail is that it will give us more of the things we really need. Greater connectivity across the transport network. A massive boost to local regeneration efforts. More direct jobs and more jobs still from the wider economic benefits. The last time someone tried to calculate a cost-benefit analysis of Crossrail was in 2007 and that showed that every £1 spent on Crossrail would generate £2.20 through increased economic activity. That’s the kind of equation any politician should like the look of. It speaks volumes and I’d be confident that it’s weighted even more heavily on the positive side in 2016.

And it’s not just Glasgow that would enjoy such benefits. The whole city-region would also see the positive effects of such an investment. Indeed, Scotland itself would be better connected as a result.

If we need these things so much then surely we should also want them to happen? And yet time and time again national government and its transport agency have ignored Crossrail. They have not accepted that it should be a national transport priority and often they have thrown it back to local government to implement (something I would be more than happy to get on with if local government actually had the powers to do so). Plans for Crossrail should be gaining momentum out in our city, rather than gathering dust on shelves. Instead of new lines getting constructed and existing ones put into better use, what we see is effort put instead into sidelining the whole project. I don’t think this is good enough.

We need to re-engage with the spirit of innovation that was the hallmark of our Victorian predecessors. Their achievements represented not just great feats of engineering, but also great leaps of imagination. Above all they were triumphs of political will, overcoming legislative obstacles as well as the topography of the land.

We do not lack in ideas today. Our engineers and designers are no less creative or ambitious than the founders of the rail network. Where we need help is in shoring up our national politics. I think we need to move beyond party political obstacles at government level and see Crossrail for what it truly is: a Glasgow project of national significance that can deliver for the city, for Scotland and for our shared futures.

There are other things we can do too. The integration of traditional ‘heavy’ rail infrastructure to light rail can allow us to run tram-trains to Glasgow Airport. This would mean trams could run on both an urban tramway network and on traditional railway lines. It ensures the best of both worlds and maximises the use of existing infrastructure. These work perfectly well in other British and European cities. Many of those cities are smaller and less well-resourced than Glasgow. Again then: why not us? National government inexplicably cancelled this project, which was to have been a flagship development for Glasgow’s Commonwealth Games. Our bid to host the Games contained a clear national sign-up to this important project, but that didn’t prevent the Scottish Government from turning its face against it. Local authorities are now working through the City Deal to get this back on track – no pun intended. I hope that the Scottish Government can now be big enough to admit the error of its ways and see the Glasgow Airport rail link as another great example of a much-needed national infrastructure project.

I used to drive a train for a living. Now I have another important job as a local politician where I want to help steer a better Glasgow that works for all its communities. I see the railways as an absolutely key feature of our future progress and I know that view is shared by many others across our city and country.

I’m only too conscious that Glasgow has many challenges to face. But I know equally that much of Scotland’s success depends on a thriving Glasgow. We can work together to tackle those problems. Some of the answers are staring us in the face. They need investment, a clear vision and above all leadership. With those things in place there is little which we cannot achieve. But if the national will is lacking it is very hard to get much done.

We’re at a junction. We can go forward or we can stand still and watch others move past us. So let’s work together, put aside party differences, and let Glasgow’s railways flourish.