ACCLAIMED transport writer Christian Wolmar has blasted plans for a tram-train link at Glasgow Airport as a "short-term fix" that will "encourage very few people to leave their cars at home".

Mr Wolmar, an award-winning transport commentator who is bidding to be Labour's candidate for London mayor, urged councillors at Glasgow and Renfrewshire to give an alternative proposal for a revised heavy rail link a "fair hearing".

It comes days after the leaders of Glasgow City Council and Renfrewshire Council announced that they were seeking City Deal funding to make a tram-train link at the airport at reality by 2025, replacing the axed Glasgow Airport Rail Link (Garl) scheme.

However, Mr Wolmar said: "Building a tram/train system to Glasgow Airport rather than a full rail link is a short term fix that will be poorly used and fails to address the main source of demand. Glasgow, as Scotland’s biggest city, needs an airport that is reached easily from around Scotland, not just Glasgow city centre."

He said council leaders should instead consider local transport campaigners' vision for a heavy rail link, known as NEWgarl, which they claim could be delivered for £137m.

In a letter to the Herald last week, Bill Forbes of RailQwest, the lobby group which has drawn up the NEWgarl blueprint, said a heavy rail option had been "deliberately and quite cynically excluded" from the decision-making process.

A spokeswoman for Renfrewshire Council, who are heading up the rail link project, said: “Our work and independent studies have shown that heavy rail is not affordable in the current funding arrangements, coming in at an estimated £317m, more than twice cost of the tram-train option. The tram-train offers the best value for money and would generate the greatest shift from cars to public transport. A through station was never a possibility.”