Replacing the M8: it may not be as madcap as some think

The plan is to start discussions into the long-term future of the motorway from Townhead at the Royal Infirmary to West Street, south of the Kingston Bridge.

Where would the traffic go?

It will cause gridlock.

It’s anti-car, anti-growth, and anti-business.

Just some of the responses to what is indeed a radical proposal for Glasgow.

  Read here how the Glasgow Times reported the idea of replacing the M8

But is it as madcap as many think?

Other cities have taken similar action with major roads through their centres.

Big cities in the USA, that car-loving, gas-guzzling petrol-based economy, have been ahead of the game in ripping up miles of freeway to create better spaces for people to enjoy.

In San Francisco, a twin-deck motorway has been taken down.

In Dallas, Texas, home of the oil barons, there is a plan to remove a freeway that cuts through the city centre.

It’s not only the USA. In Seoul, in South Korea, a major motorway has been removed.

And in Europe, a motorway in the Spanish capital, Madrid, has been re-imagined with tunnels to allow a park at street level for people to enjoy.

There are parallels with Glasgow, with the motorway running directly, through the city.

The damage done with the M8 through the centre was huge.

At the time of construction, streets were cleared to make way for cars.

Families, friends and communities were split up and scattered to the outskirts as neighbourhoods disappeared in Townhead and Anderston to name but two.

The damage continued as the road sliced through the city centre, separating it from the west and creating a massive pollution hotspot belching out fumes the people of Glasgow had to suck up, straight into their lungs.

That continues today.

   The Glasgow Times revealed how there were concerns the impact the road was having don't eh city centre

To accommodate the M8 the built environment has been compromised and health has been endangered.

So, what have the other cities done?

In San Francisco, State Route 480, the Embarcadero Freeway, a double-deck motorway, connected the Bay Bridge to the Golden Gate Bridge.

One newspaper in the state said it was “a monstrous mistake” and “the ugliest thing we ever built”.

When an earthquake hit the city in 1989 the freeway was damaged and the city took the opportunity to think differently.

Rather than rebuild, the road was demolished and today it is a boulevard and promenade.

And there are no calls to reinstate the freeway.

The Dallas Interstate 345 connects to other freeways but caused neighbourhoods to be cut off from one another and led to the areas below being run down and derelict.

A current proposal is to replace it with an urban parkway and create space for people who want to move to the downtown area.

Reports estimate that the plan could free up 245 acres for development, bring in  27,540 residents and create more than 20,000 jobs.

In Seoul, in South Korea, the council has removed more than 15 expressways this century.

The Ahyeon overpass was one.

Another, the Cheonggyecheon expressway, was demolished in 2003 and replaced with an artificial river.

The city has used the spaces instead for cycleways and trams.

In Madrid, the M-30 has been diverted underground with tunnels to allow traffic to still flow through the city.

But at street level, it has been replaced with park areas, footpaths, cycle paths and new housing.

These projects are not without cost. Demolition and redevelopment cost hundreds of millions of pounds.

Maintaining the current network, however, is also expensive.

The cost of the Woodside viaduct repairs going on just now, which is inside the zone earmarked by the council for a possible long-term replacement, is costing at least £100m for a very short stretch of road.

The examples around the world, and there are many more, give credence to the thinking of those who want to replace the M8.

Angus Millar, the council’s transport convenor, has said that the M8 is a 1950s solution to a 2030s problem.

He suggests that if we were considering it now, the M8 would not go through the city.

Edinburgh, for example, did not build a motorway through its historic centre.

The M8 stopped to the west and it was years later before a bypass was built to connect with the A1, heading south.

Former chancellor, Alastair Darling, was a councillor in the 1980s when there were plans to build a motorway through the capital.

He later said: “If we hadn’t stopped it, the middle of Edinburgh would have been a completely different place from what it is today.

“It would have been destroyed by these maniacs who wanted to build a stilted-up motorway as the way of the future.”

We have an opportunity to re-think our city centre and serious conversation about transport, public and private, is needed.

The planners of the past made a huge mistake in carving up the city for the M8, leaving a scar.

The people of today can heal it and create a cleaner greener future for our city.