Transport in Glasgow

The city of Glasgow, Scotland, has a transport system encompassing air, rail, road and an underground light metro line.

Commuters travelling into Glasgow from the neighbouring local authorities of North and South Lanarkshire, Renfrewshire, East Renfrewshire, and East and West Dunbartonshire have a major influence on travel patterns, with tens of thousands of residents commuting into the city each day.

The network is heavily used at peak times and is one of the most comprehensive in the United Kingdom, connecting the city centre with the rest of the sprawling Greater Glasgow area.

It connects indirectly to the M80 at Riddrie and to the A803 at Townhead junction before skirting around the city centre on an elevated viaduct, meeting the A82 before dipping down through Charing Cross and then rising again to go over the A814 (Argyle Street / Clydeside Expressway) before crossing the River Clyde on the Kingston Bridge.

The bridge is 10 lanes wide and is the busiest road crossing in Europe, with traffic volumes of up to 150,000 vehicles per day.

[citation needed] After the bridge, the M8 merges with the M74 and M77 at Plantation, becoming one of the widest stretches of road in the UK, with 16 lanes providing connections between the three motorways.

The M74's northern extension from Kingston to Tollcross via Rutherglen was completed in 2011, finalising the original plan of a southern motorway across the city.

The M77 begins in Glasgow at the M8 / M74 Plantation connection and runs south-west to Kilmarnock via Bellahouston, Pollok Country Park, the Silverburn Shopping Centre and Newton Mearns.

This is unlikely ever to be completed as in 2008, the Scottish Government began construction of the M74 northern extension following a similar route to the south west portion of the inner ring road.

The extension connected the M74 to the M8, forming a motorway box around the eastern part of Glasgow similar to, but slightly larger than that originally envisioned in the Bruce Report.

In addition to the motorways, there are trunk roads - key strategic routes maintained by central government.

Glasgow Central primarily serves routes to the south of the city, such as those in Lanarkshire, Ayrshire and links to the rest of the United Kingdom.

Glasgow and District Transport Plans from 1951 show the layout of the proposed station, available on: Hipkiss' Scanned Old Maps.

The St. Enoch Centre was built on the site of the old St Enoch Station in the 1980s, and Buchanan House, headquarters of Transport Scotland and Glasgow Caledonian University now stand on the site formerly occupied by Buchanan Street station.Locals have long pressed for a link which will join the two halves of the urban railway network together, making possible through journeys via the central area without having to disembark at either Central or Queen Street and traverse the city centre by foot or road.

The Glasgow Crossrail initiative has been on the drawing board for many years but still awaits funding from central government, despite the favourable outcomes of a feasibility study carried out in 2003.

Plans to connect Glasgow to London by a 270 mph (430 km/h) Transrapid (German Maglev train) emerged in June 2005.

This, taken together with the orange-coloured paintwork of the carriages, has led to it being known, by guidebooks more than the locals who still refer to it as the "Subway", as "The Clockwork Orange" after the 1971 film.

Glasgow had for many years an extensive system of trams that ran on the city's streets alongside other traffic.

The initial line proposed was a 20-kilometre route run from Maryhill in the Northwest of the city to Easterhouse on Glasgow's Eastern fringe.

The plan then outlined future expansion of the tram network so that it might one day stretch across the Greater Glasgow area.

However, there were objections to these proposals, amongst them from Strathclyde Bus Holdings, who it could be argued did so out of fear of their profit margins being affected by such an initiative.

There are proposals to run trams further than this route out to the Braehead shopping centre and possibly Glasgow Airport; to Clydebank; and across the rest of the city.

[9] SPT has stated however that it is leaving open the option of laying tram lines on this route and replacing the buses with a light rail system.

Glasgow Corporation Transport Department operated a small trolleybus system between 1949 and 1967, using electricity generated from the same power station as the trams.