Good evening! This week's edition of the In Common newsletter comes from Adham Fisher (below), a campaigner who travels to towns and cities to see how easy it is to travel all bus routes there. This week, he was in Glasgow
THE scaled-back 2026 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow have just taken place.
The marathon was one dropped event. I proposed a replacement “bus marathon” to a few sustainability organisations, as it might be a good publicity opportunity for them. At 12.30pm on Thursday, July 30, I, three members of Get Glasgow Moving (GGM) and some chap I’d just met in the Revolver Hotel lined up for the 398 on Killermont Street outside Buchanan Bus Station. It was our first bus of the next two hours, during which we would ride as many routes as possible for at least one stop.
GGM has run the Better Buses for Strathclyde (BBfS) campaign since 2023. It advocates for putting buses back into public control and better integration between all bus operators, the Glasgow Subway and the Glasgow suburban rail network. As all this is deregulated, there is the slight inconvenience of – if you turn up on the day and want the Strathclyde Partnership for Transport (SPT) ZoneCard that is valid on all three modes – having to buy a smartcard at a Subway station, then going to a Payzone store to have the ZoneCard loaded on that, or making an account and buying it online. Furthermore, ScotRail sells the Roundabout ticket for train and subway only, and the Bus Tripper ticket, valid on most operators and routes, is only available through bus apps.
Not realising this and having spent the better part of an hour going between Buchanan Street and Queen Street stations in search of a physical all-mode ticket, it appeared that the cheapest method was to buy the Tripper for £7.20, then use contactless for the Subway (capped at £3.40) if I wanted to go to another bus hub like Govan or Partick.
After taking my second bus (75) and trying to pick up more routes by running to adjacent stops and switching the directions on the grid, I began to realise that the city centre bus stops were quite a bit further apart than they looked on the map. This was exacerbated by taking the 9A south from West George Street, it not stopping at Central for some reason and going over the Clyde to Commerce Street, which took about nine minutes with the distance and traffic lights. Additionally, the inclines of the bus corridors in the west of the city centre made running up them a bit difficult, compared with the flatter roads in Merchant City.
The 38 is shared by two different operators and would count as two routes if I caught both. But they do not stop at the same stop. The wrong one approached; I tried to hail it to no avail. In a reversed situation, I was on another shared route, the 3, which sailed past the stop of its other operator with two people trying to hail it. The respective routes are not identical, so perhaps having them serve different stops is an aim to reduce confusion. But it’s confusing.
Having disembarked a 6A at Theatre Royal, I went round the corner and saw Games shuttle buses leaving from Renfrew Street to Scotstoun Stadium. Enquiring if I could take one, I was asked if I was an athlete (haha), as they were for athletes only. “I’m doing a bus marathon. Not an official athlete, no.” Then I ran a bit further on and exclaimed loudly with surprise to see fellow competitor Paul there. We both took the 18 and were level with nine routes ridden. An hour in at that point, I dropped my target from 40 to 20 routes.
Laurieston was the home straight, going up and down Eglinton Street on the 38, 38b and 38e (prefixes and suffixes denoted different routes), then I just managed to take a 10 before the two hours were up. A grand total of 18 routes, which was personally disappointing. It just didn’t have the pace I had anticipated, but no blame could be apportioned.
The medal ceremony was in St Enoch Square, using railway tickets from aptly named stations. Brondesbury went to Eilidh (nine routes), Silverdale to Lukas (17) and Goldthorpe to Paul (18 – I relinquished the chance to share the medal, plus I had the return portion anyway).
With better preparation, 18 bus routes in two hours is beatable. I also want to try visiting every station in the Roundabout area in the fastest time, like the Tube Challenge.
In any case, the best way to recover after this excursion was to take bus 23 to the Hydro to watch the Games netball a few hours later, and next morning, the Subway to Govan, walk over the Clyde and spend three hours in the superb Riverside Museum. And I have surely discovered a great visual symbol of transport racing; the running clock outside Buchanan Bus Station.
