Borders Towns. Waiting for the train

A piece written for the Urban Design Group Journal about the opportunites for new, well designed places along the route of the reinstated Waverley railway line.

Oliver Chapman

Abstract

The Edinburgh City Region’s predicted labour shortfall of 18,500 by 2015 increases the need for affordable housing within its reach. As a result, towns in the Scottish Borders are tackling the issue of how to grow into larger, better connected settlements. One such response is the planned revival of the Waverley Railway line, which previously linked a population area of 200,000, and was victim to Beeching’s axe in 1969. This ambitious project raises questions of how we might integrate new stations into existing town centre locations and design the new parkway stations which connect the rural living car user to the train network.

For those towns further down the line to the south there is the added uncertainty of whether the line will ever be extended in a future phase. Melrose, Newton St Boswells and Hawick face the dilemma of how to plan the renewal of their town centres whilst needing to leave original cuttings, embankments and bridges vacant, right in the heart of their development plans.

(Image: Shankend Viaduct 1981 RCAHMS)