GLASGOW stands on the precipice of a major opportunity.
That’s according to the city’s transport convenor Angus Millar who wants to see the “scar” of the M8, which cuts through Glasgow’s centre, healed.
The precipice itself has a physical form. It is the Woodside Viaduct which sees the motorway curve eastwards from Charing Cross and has loomed over the neighbourhood from which it takes its name and Cowcaddens on the southern side since its completion in 1971.
This section of road is seen by campaigners who want shot of the M8 completely as a major weak point in the motorway’s future.
All options, from permanently fixing the crumbling bridge to getting rid of it entirely, are expensive, said Millar, an SNP councillor.
“Removal is by far the cheapest for the public purse,” he adds.
Proponents say that getting rid of this section would see the motorway replaced with a “boulevard” which would still be able to carry large volumes of traffic.
Possible models would be the giant avenues of Barcelona. A thoroughfare like the Avinguda Diagonal, which slices the city in two, could carry 10 lanes of vehicular traffic before the construction of a new tram route, as well as four cycle lanes.
For its would-be imitators in Glasgow, this example’s chief attraction is that it can carry large volumes of traffic without disrupting the flow of the city.
Despite the huge numbers of vehicles which can pass along the Avinguda, it remains home to shops, hotels, cafes, restaurants and even homes, unlike much of the areas which flank the M8.
When it was built, the motorway was met with a huge deal of opposition.
“Nobody would be arguing for the demolition of large swathes of central Glasgow in the way that they took forward in the 1960s,” said Millar.
Big sections of Cowcaddens, Townhead and Anderston were levelled by Labour amid the car mania of the 20th century.
Getting rid of the motorway at the Woodside Viaduct would, proponents say, provide an opportunity to knit back together some of those areas which were ripped apart over 50 years ago.
Those in favour envisage a new boulevard, still able to accommodate traffic, but places for people, too, like flats, offices, shops and restaurants.
In the long-term, Green councillor Christy Mearns thinks the M8 could be removed from Glasgow city centre entirely.
If it is done, then it should be done incrementally, she stressed, and on the basis of evidence.
But she is also clear in her belief that replacing the yawning gap which splits Anderston on the one side and the city centre on the other would be good for Glasgow.
She said: “The economic potential of the city improves because you open up so much more space that previously the M8 occupied, you create new business opportunities, you create opportunities to create new public realm and spaces where people actually want to be.”
Such plans would likely be met with some fierce opposition from motorists.
Mearns acknowledged that journey times might increase but said that amid an ongoing and increasingly visible climate emergency it was time to get serious about reducing car use, which she predicted scrapping the M8 would aid.
She might also want to point to the example set in Seoul. Around 20 years ago, the Cheonggyecheon Expressway, which cut through the South Korean capital, was replaced with a waterway.
This move – which cost a cool $281 million – had a number of predictable effects: air pollution fell, public transport passenger numbers increased and, to the undoubted relief of its citizens, temperatures fell in the humid city.
But it also had more unexpected effect: traffic flows through Seoul actually sped up. Researchers at Cornell University attributed this in part to a greater dispersal of traffic throughout alternative roads.
Transport Scotland, which is overseeing the ongoing repairs to the Woodside Viaduct, told The National it remained “committed to finding a permanent solution” for the stretch of road.
No permanent preferred option has yet been identified, said a spokesperson for the Scottish Government body, but that the various approaches of “repair, replace and remove” would be put to the public for consideration while modelling work was carried out to see what the effects of each could be.
