Ambitious plans for an underground rail station at Edinburgh Airport have been scrapped. The Scottish Government said the £650m Edinburgh Airport Rail Link, known as EARL, would be too expensive and that the money could be better spent elsewhere.

Proposals for a new airport ‘parkway’ station on the Edinburgh-Fife line and a new loop on the Edinburgh-Glasgow line were instead outlined. Transport Minister Stewart Stevenson said the scheme would achieve intended goals more quickly and at a third of the original price.

Stevenson told the Scottish Parliament there was no way for the EARL project to proceed and said the new plans set out an ‘ambitious, credible and deliverable alternative.’

The plan includes an airport station at Gogar on the Fife railway line, to allow easy access to the airport. Stevenson said the government also intended to build a rail link between both the Fife and Edinburgh routes to Glasgow, known as the ‘Dalmeny chord’, allowing trains from Scotland’s two largest cities to stop at the new airport station.

The savings from EARL, said the minister, would be invested in improving rail services, including a planned electrified rail network between Edinburgh and Glasgow and routes up to Dunblane, Alloa and Cumbernauld.