Delays to eight projects around the River Clyde to allow the Govan-Partick bridge to progress have now been agreed.
The Glasgow City Region cabinet has approved changes to the £113.9m Clyde Waterfront and West End Innovation Quarter programme — part of the £1bn City Deal, which is jointly funded by the UK and Scottish Governments.
A £12m increase in the cost of the planned pedestrian and cycle bridge between Water Row and Pointhouse Quay, now valued at £29.5m, has led to other schemes being deferred.
These include work on an Expressway footbridge, estimated at £1.2m, and an £11m project to improve pedestrian and cycle routes, and quay walls, around the Scottish Event Campus.
Improvements to the quay walls at the Briggait/Lancefield Quay, estimated at almost £11m, and at Yorkhill Quay, expected to cost £1.2m, have also been delayed.
A £3.1m scheme at Govan Graving Docks as part of the city’s “aspiration for a River Park” has also been pushed back as well as work on a Cantin Basin bridge, valued at £588,000.
Work on a pedestrian route between Cessnock Subway and Pacific Quay has been postponed too.
Glasgow councillors supported the changes at a meeting last week, and final approval was granted by the City Region cabinet on Tuesday.
Reasons for the cost increase include design changes, increased construction costs, including a rise in the price of steel, and supply chain issues linked to Covid-19, Brexit and the Suez Canal blockage earlier this year.
Glasgow’s council leader Susan Aitken said: “We’ve undertaken a reprofiling of the overall programme of the Clyde and West End Innovation Quarter, which seeks not to abandon any of the projects within that but to defer some of them.”
She added alternative funding sources would be considered.
In total, there are 27 sub projects in the Clyde Waterfront and West End Innovation Quarter programme.
Jonathan Brown, head of the City Deal programme management office at Glasgow City Council, said the bridge was the “most complex and significant” project.
He added: “The bridge itself will be transformative, it will provide an active travel connection between the south bank and the West End of the city.
“That will directly create new job opportunities, apprenticeships and training opportunities.”
And Mr Brown added the development would also be “integral” to other projects, including the regeneration of Water Row and the University of Glasgow’s innovation campus, which has secured £38m from the UK Government.
