Glasgow Inner Ring Road
The Bruce Report, a wide-ranging investigation into the post-war regeneration of the city, proposed (in addition to other road plans and a redistribution of rail termini) a system of motorways into and around central Glasgow.
After consultation between the Glasgow City Corporation and its traffic consultants Scott Wilson Kirkpatrick & Partners, the basic design of the Bruce proposals were further developed, and the first contracts were awarded to build the northern and western flanks of the ring in four stages; Townhead, Woodside, Charing Cross and Kingston Bridge.
The construction of the road greatly reduced the amount of traffic travelling through the city centre, and one of the lasting legacies of the project was that it allowed for the removal of traffic and therefore the pedestrianisation of Buchanan Street, and the central sections of Argyle and Sauchiehall Streets which took place between 1975 and 1977, to create a continuous shopping area devoid of cars.
In 1993 the conservation organisation DoCoMoMo listed the completed sections of the inner ring road as one of the sixty key Scottish monuments of the post-war period.
At the Townhead (north-east) interchange, a complex grade separated junction was laid out to connect the North Flank of the ring to three roads proposed or under construction (the East Flank, the A803 Springburn Expressway, and to the Monklands Motorway to carry traffic out of the city to the east and on to Edinburgh) and to the existing A8 road towards Dennistoun and Glasgow Cross.
The south-western interchange at Tradeston was built to incorporate connections to the South Flank and to the Renfrew Motorway to carry traffic out of the city westwards to Greenock and Glasgow Airport.
When the East and South Flanks were eventually abandoned, the UK government confirmed that the scheme would be the last motorway built through a city in the United Kingdom.
Amongst the most infamous examples are the access to the unbuilt south section at Tradeston which was left as a "ski-jump" (the road abruptly terminates in mid-air, and has remained so despite the 2010 M74 extension, as other plans were used to link the roads), the tangle of slip-roads at Tradeston, and the two infamous "Bridges to Nowhere"; a concrete podium over the Charing Cross section that was left empty for nearly 20 years before finally acting as a base for an office building constructed in the early 1990s (this was always its intended purpose although it had the appearance of an overbridge) and a pedestrian bridge over the carriageways that terminated in mid air as a result of the incompleteness of the adjacent Anderston Centre commercial complex.
The motorway is derided in popular culture, with Glasgow-based pop band Deacon Blue's album Raintown largely forming an attack on the inner-city atmosphere of the road, and including a picture of it cutting through the city on the rear cover.
The plans are for a road linking the M74 extension to the M8 at the Provan Gas Works, about 2 km (1+1⁄4 mi) east of the interchange at Townhead.
In 2019, Glasgow City Council put forward plans to cover over the infamous "trench" through Charing Cross and Anderston with a raised garden, in an attempt to create a new public space in the area and to reconnect the communities in Anderston and the West End which saw their direct link to the city centre severed by the motorway.
As well as the aforementioned garden plans, several of the 1970s-era office blocks constructed at the same time as the motorway will be demolished to make way for replacement commercial developments and high-rise student housing towers.
