CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Infrastructure
“It is time to get rid of the M8 motorway ripping Glasgow in half”
(9 posts)-
Posted 4 months ago #
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While removing the M8 from central Glasgow is obviously a great idea, it will not happen. Firstly the Scottish Government has already spend £150m on temprary repairs to the Woodside viaducts, so knocking them down would be a political scandal they would be keen to avoid. Secondly, removal is one of three options (repair, replace, remove) and has clearly been included for purely presentational reasons. This is how the 'remove' option is described in the consultation booklet:
Whilst removing the M8 Woodside Viaducts is an option under consideration, it is anticipated to have major detrimental impacts on traffic flows, connectivity, network resilience, and journey time reliability, both on the trunk road network and Glasgow’s local roads.
Civil service speak for "not happening".Posted 4 months ago # -
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Today, when Transport Scotland revealed its early proposals for permanently repairing the Woodside Viaducts on the M8, they presented three options: repair, replace, or remove.
Though still in the very early stages, the current consultation is the first time that the transport authority has ever formally presented the option of removing the viaducts altogether. When Peter Kelly read through the brochure, he was surprised to see the “remove” section – the Replace The M8 campaigner wasn’t expecting it.
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Posted 2 months ago # -
Major support for removal as this road is deserted for much of the day
There is a steady growth in people switching to express coach & rail for journeys into city centres
Citylink 900 haas increased servicxe by 20% to 5 journeys/hr with AIR service 50% more 2 to 3 per hour
Both now also have Voi bikes getting increasedd use, and with closure of Glasgow Central for 2 weeks the Voi bike hires between Glasgow & Paisley went crazy
The M74 is under used so by sending motor traffic foo M80 via M73 & M8 sent South at Ballieston the through traffic can all go via M74 to Tradeston
The main freight traffic is increasingly going by rail & the daily Tesco Train to Inverness from Coatbridge is now carrying processed timber back South
More later
Posted 2 months ago # -
Major support for removal as this road is deserted for much of the day
This is the same argument that calls to reduce the size of car parks at shopping centres and hospitals, the former being heavily in demand at weekends and the evening peak in weekdays, and the latter being heavily in demand every day. The non-car alternatives have to be good enough first.
The M73/M74 is probably a good alternative for the A737/M8 east-west through-traffic, but the M80 to M8 has the whole northwest catchment for which the Erskine Bridge is too far west and the Clyde Tunnel too constrained. One wonders whether the never-built inner ring road east and south sections through the Gorbals between Townhead and Tradeston interchanges would have been any better than going via the Kingston bridge. Presumably it would have also required mending by now.
Posted 2 months ago # -
Thanks @Arellcat I'll slide back to add some historical context on Woodside Viaduct and note my Flickr album collections of parts of M8 falling apart that go back to the manic rate of construction in the late 1970's
I knew an engineer who was involved with site agents/QS overseeing the contractors for the client. Work was so intensive that wholesalers ran out of paraffin heaters for site huts and site boots/hand tools. A cabinet masker was working as a shuttering joiner, nd a student working as a casual labourer had to read drawings for their foreman....
The Woodside Viaduct is built over the Glasgow Subway (which follows the line of Great Western/City Roads from Kelvinbridge to Cowcaddens, and also the Pinkston Burn, which last appeared on the surface in maps for the 1852 Great Reform Act. Unfortunately when Bob McAlpine was building the Subway in 1896 the Pinkston Burn burst into the Tunnels, and continues to flow through St Georges Cross station, providing a wonderful cool ambience, of beingh next to a mountain stream with a legacy of a speed restriction as the tunnels had to squeeze around the culvert between here and Cowcaddens station
This is also an element of my solution to cooling down London Underground and SPT is already using the water flowing through St Georges Gross and other tunnels/stations. I have a suspicion that the related work done to recaulk the cast iron subway tunnels running roughly long the line of Glasgow Street probably triggered the collapse of the outer skin of the wall of the tenement at 18 Oakfield Avenue (only the outer wall & only the ground floor/basement) after the water flowing in the ground found a new way to flow
In the months before Phoenix Road was ripped out to cast the jacking pads around the original piles & columns supporting the crosshead beams that the viaduct beams were resting on, with the water damage at the ends of each deck beam providing a steady collection of concrete debris and exposing the steel reinforcement of the deck beams in an accelerating process as the steel rusted, expanded and broke away more concrete.
The Pinkston Burn joined in on this by leaching away the underlying clay/gravel that most of Glasgow's road are built on. The paved areas sank first but eventually there was a ½ metre dip in the carriageway of Phoenix Road rubbing UBDER the M8 viaduct
I'm recording similar deterioration taking place along the M8 through Glasgow here, with similar viaduct beam damage on the approaches to Kingston Bridge, and the retaining walls for the huge cutting at Charing Cross. I've done some monitoring/recording of the A804 iink between J17 and J18 which remains a general purpose road, with a 30mph speed limit but has no competent road design to slow down drivers leaving the M8 to then launch into the 20/30mph roads at Charing Cross (& St Georges Cross) without slowing from the 50mph (or higher speeds!) they were driving at on the motorway' The steel posts for the End of Motorway sign at J18 rusted away and the sign fell down over 2 years ago ..... It has never been replaced, and the 30mph roundel was frequently demolished
I'm seriously limited with resources after Cycling UK ditched several of their long standing retained specialists but I've several issues to develop with suitable media contacts - I worked with LesleyRiddoch in 1994 with GSofA on a Car-n-Age project which included a reading of the Heathcote Williams[b] work [b]Autogeddon which must surely warrant a reprise for EdFoC
This must be the TLDR limit so I;ll break off to take up the experience from spending nearly 2 months in hospital last year with a welcome visit by a joint muse/nemesis when they came over for work in Glasgow & the informal survey of staff & visitors/clients about how they travelled to a hospital with 24 trains per hour to a station within 6-10 minutes walk of the main entrance (06.00-00.00), plus local bus routes over roughly the same hours and equally a short walk (battling through all the obstructions and crossing the main A82! without using the existing wide tunnels (2) of the disused railway to get to bus stops for 6 bus routes with similar frequencies to the trains)
Posted 2 months ago # -
Hospitals - pouring ££ into the avoidable bottomless pit of providing land and pavement to store empty cars for 8-12 hours (40-50% of the time) and generally empty overnight (50% of the time)
Looking closely at the hospitals where I've recently spent time I see 50% or more of the land being used to store empty cars (AKA parking) & a distinctly blinkered position on the alternative measures that can make it easier to deliver a Total Mobility offer to staff and visitors using the vision from the project I was working on 30 years ago
There's some serious butt kicking (a Boot in the Glutes) with Scotrail and NHS Lothian for Edinburgh
With some helpful route sampling by @Arellcat we've evaluated some Pioneer cyclist options and the potential for low cost or even guerilla action such as that delivered by Spokes volunteers in the past (Pilton Path - 1986?/Donkey Lane/Belters path - Tranent (1994?) With smart direction Ive used 300 year old roads,long abandoned in Callander and near Dalwhinnie to deliver the NCN cycle routes by simply clearing off 100+ years of debris, clearing out the drains and resurfacing the road base, which is usually in perfect condition to just resurface with fine graded stone (6mm to dust) for a low cost pavementAt present its a 12-15 minute bike ride from Shawfair Station or Sheriffhall P&R to the Biomedical Campus[/b and the [b]ERI but this can be radically improved by :
- getting out from Shawfair Station up platform using the provision fro access to the West side
- crossing Millerhill Road with a small roundabout at the junction with road geometry appropriate for motor traffic travelling at 20mph, and the approaches designed to progressively slow down drivers
- delivering a properly drained fire pavement for the 400 metres of dirt path between Millerhill Road and the local roads in Danderhall
- from the messy local roads to the South of the Bio Quarter deliver a path along the raised line of the (buried) aqueduct that crosses under the bus-only link road from RIE site to Millerhill Road & thence Newcraighall
( there is a culvert that goes under the busy roads here IIRC this is Niddrie Burn, and it may be that flood management work will require water management for this area to deliver a larger culvert for handling rainfall surges coming down from upstream (Niddrie/Craigmillar etc)
If a new culvert is delivered it should be like several on the A95 near Aviemore where a path is built beside the small burns and available for 51 weeks per year but able to survive a surge flood occasionallyA big opportunity to connect with VoiBikes at Shawfair/Sheriffhall and ERI with a possible need for mobile hire hubs (as per RoueLibre system which operated in Paris 40 years ago) Press for Scotrail to agree licence for putting hire points at Shawfair & Newcraighall
With the Millerhill Depot an easy cycle ride from Shawfair this can save £££ on taxis and land for car parking getting train crew out to Millerhill as well
Here's my observed detail from Gartnaval Hospital where Hyndland Station records nearly 2 million boardings per year yet is hardly inviting to use with narrow pedestrian tunnels (which could be de-roofed to bring in more light) where the ambience (and reported actual experience) is threatening with minimal staffing. A massive opportunity to deliver new buildings that include a local mini supermarket plus a child care facility - I'm working on this, but as noted earlier I need to connect with more resources
Every morning from my vantage point of the ward windows I watched the Parking Pantomime as car users spent 20-30 minutes finding a space, until many just parked on footways, ambulance bays & the landscaped areas, without facing any penalties. Others parked on nearby residential streets. Several were travelling under 2 Km (less than 10 minutes cycling) and one even drove so that they could get to the gym after work! Driving Blinkers embedded witha massive cultural shake-up seriously needed
Here's my picture review of Gartnaval but this is just one of the many NHS sites that I've looked at with the limited resources I want to get rolling
https://www.flickr.com/photos/h52/albums/72177720316842839
Other include QEUH - 1.2 Km from Cardonald Station with 34 trains/hour flying through & near immediate facility to restore existing railway tracks to operational use to Braehead as a P&R site for Renfrew & shifting car drivers in to a 5 min rail journey to Glasgow rather then to 30+ minutes of queuing on M8
Wishaw Hospital - a new station plus bus interchange, with a new local convenience store that can also remove the problem of local stopping trains at Shieldmuir near Motherwell with this new location
Dundee Ninewells approx 1.5 Km from Invergowrie Station and the request stop on the 24hr Ember E3 coaches to/from Edinburgh/EDI which can do Dundee-Edinburgh in 50 minutes on off-peak trips with minimal demand for request stops
Glasgow Royal Infirmary just 400 metres from High Street Station but hardly an easy or inviting journey
For Inverness the work of Hitrans to keep the Bewegen EAPC bikes running sees these well used to get between the city centre and Raigmore HospitalThe only really brilliant move was in the delivery of the Borders Hospital which was planned so that Al;l bus services between Melrose and Galashiels could drive THROUGH the site without the time penalty of a cul-de-sac and the main bus stop directly outside the main hospital reception ... but also directly visible from the RVS Tearoom Its less than 2Km from Tweedbank Station BUT a serious camapaigning issue is to restore the old railway route that went UNDER the main road where 4 metre Arnco culvert should have been put in place as the embankment carrying the road was built to maintain the route for walking & cycling (A bike hire pilot operation here can begin with a Tweedbank-Melrose-Borders Hospital-Heriot Watt Borders Campus coverage and growing this steadily with one of the proven systems (Lime/Nextbike/Beryl/Voi/) tendering to deliver the hardware & software, with a local cycle project delivering the management and maintenance, with local people, who can also gain training & references for onward employment
Oh well time to close!
I do need a few bits of IT support as my coding is rather rusty (RTFM plus!) & I've a glitch loading my Flickr images that's cropped up
Loads to do especially as our bus and rail services are getting better delivery potential if only a few silos were shaken & barriers burst open
Posted 2 months ago # -
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When Transport Scotland presented three early options for the permanent fix of Glasgow’s decaying Woodside Viaducts back in February, they did not present the only possibilities. The options they put forward were heavily weighted in favour of the status quo – keeping the elevated motorway in place either through repairs or replacement. The third option, to remove the viaducts, was framed as chaos. But the model they used to sound the alarm about potential traffic disruption constructed a partial narrative.
Herein lies the false dilemma: that we keep the motorway running through the city, or we abolish it overnight with no accompanying measures. This would mean clogging up the M74, which is already at capacity and sending scores of displaced vehicles racing through residential streets like a mischief of rats.
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Posted 2 months ago # -
Going West from Edinburgh to Ayr we do take the alternate route at Easterhouse round the south side of the Weege - avoids the viaducts and the Kingston Bridge. Works fine unless there is an accident and then all the slip roads clogged and the jam takes a while to clear with lot of reversing up slip roads and displacing around rutherglen. Going in the other direction you have to double back on yourself for a bit which is a little counter intuitive. But should work fine. Closing the North M8 will be a big thing BUT Glasgow Council favour that option which is actually a bold thing to do. To finally say we shouldn’t have run a motorway through our city centre etc. Other cities in Europe have re-wilded city centre motorways. Again on the south side the routes around East Kilbride can get you round Glasgow. But the North side is all M8 unless you loop a lot further North. Glasgow has also retained the suburban railways [they are close to capacity throught he week]. Glasgow buses less good. Glasgow cycling good again mainly South and West.
Posted 2 months ago #
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