The station is considered to be poorly positioned for modern uses, as it is built near the heart of the old village of East Kilbride, and only partly serves the large new area that has grown since it opened. Since the 1970s, there have been a number of plans to extend the line to East Kilbride Shopping Centre and the bus station; however, none of these have ever come to fruition, primarily due to the cost of any such project and the difficulty in the steep and densely built over terrain between the current station and the centre. The last such proposal in 1989, which involved tunnelling beneath the area around the Civic Centre to reach the new (1986) bus station, was defeated by protests from local 'NIMBY' interests.