October 1, 2007 (LPAC)--A renewed initiative for maglev has been sparked in Scotland, in the wake of the Kiedrich conference and the decision for the Munich Transrapid project last week: Scottish Transport Minister Stewart Stephenson's announcement last Friday that he would invest £1 billion for the electrification of the existing main Edinburgh-Glasgow rail line but scrap the much-discussed £650 million new construction of the Edinburgh Airport Rail Link (EARL), met protest from the industry. As the Scotsman news daily reports over last weekend, Graham Birse, deputy chief executive of Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce, said that this scrap of EARL was a missed opportunity. "It had the potential to link the airport to the whole network. It will be a loss for the rest of Scotland as much as for Edinburgh." Birse insisted that the next step should be to look at high-speed rail links from Edinburgh to England, including the possibility of Maglev.