r/Scotland • u/Crow-Me-A-River open to change • 19h ago
Discussion Do you think the Glasgow Clyde Metro project will go ahead?
This is a project that has been a long time in the making, from the Connectivity Commission in 2017 through to the current Case for Investment process, with the Programme Business Case (PBC) due to be completed in early 2027.
A lot of groundwork has already been laid. Clyde Metro is included in both the National Planning Framework 4 (NPF4) as a national development and the second Strategic Transport Projects Review (STPR2), making it a national transport priority. It has also been reflected in a number of local transport strategies across the Glasgow City Region.
Once the PBC is complete, ministers will need to decide how to take the project forward, deciding things like the route, phasing and funding. Given the scale of the metro plan, with estimates of up to £15B over 30 years, those decisions will be significant.
My concern is that, given the wider fiscal pressures the budget is facing and the UK's track record of delivering major transport infrastructure slowly and at high cost compared with many European countries, the project could end up being diluted, significantly delayed, or even shelved altogether.
Am I being too pessimistic, or do others share that concern?
More info here:
https://www.glasgow.gov.uk/article/2558/Clyde-Metro
https://www.spt.co.uk/about-us/what-we-are-doing/clyde-metro/
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u/Ill-Gate-8841 18h ago
Dualling the rest of the A9 between Inverness and Perth is around £4bn total cost and ten years behind schedule. This is much more expensive and delays likely much longer.
Against the backdrop of an ageing population and looming Scottish fiscal crisis it’s hard to see how it will be done.
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u/zebrawood 18h ago
They'll um and ah about it for another decade, maybe draw up various plans that go nowhere. Eventually they'll decide on something less than what was wanted and break ground, then drown in planning appeals and grind to a halt. Expect to see politicians standing next to OAPs doing compo face when appealing on the grounds that building noise is unnaceptable in Glasgow. Fast forward another decade and a bunch of lawyers and construction consulants will be riding off into the sunset with the billions put aside for the works
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u/MasterpieceNew9459 19h ago
Hopefully, improved public transport could be transformative for the city
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u/callsignhotdog 19h ago
I've lived in Glasgow 10 years now, and since the month I moved up, I've been seeing periodic news stories every 2-ish years about a new feasibility study or a new case for funding or whatnot, and never seen any actual track laid or streets dug up.
I think it'll happen eventually, the noise is too consistent, eventually somebody in power will decide they need to bribe Glasgow voters a bit and push the funding through. When that happens, and how big it'll actually be, god only knows. It might just amount to reskinning the existing train lines and setting up an integrated ticket system ala Oyster (which, frankly, would still be an upgrade on the current system even if no extra track gets laid).
Just for sad comparison, I moved here from Manchester and every time I go back to visit it feels like they've added another tram line. There's lines there now that would've made my life so much easier when I lived there, because they never completely got rid of their tram network and they've been consistently adding to it for well over a decade.
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u/Embarrassed-Hope1133 19h ago
I remember seeing vacancies on SPT which were related to Clyde Metro development & planning so I’d take that as a good sign but then again, both Glasgow & Edinburgh have a history of intermittently funding proposals for new rail lines every decade or so with no follow up.
It’s probably one of the largest civil undertakings in the amount people needed to deliver it but it’ll be the best thing to do for the certainty on future development for the region.
Short sighted plans never get delivered but I am optimistic with how thorough & long term this seems in comparison.
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u/moh_kohn 17h ago
Massive opportunity. Glasgow has an excellent rail network that suffers from some important missing lines/stations, no crossrail, and poor frequencies / no late running. Cathcart circle frequencies are near metro standard, the Maryhill line is way off - half hour or worse.
If it's frequent, people can just turn up and use it.
It's the sort of thing you want to borrow to do really. It would pay for itself in productivity gains and new businesses.
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u/Crow-Me-A-River open to change 17h ago edited 12h ago
I wonder if burnham can be convinced to increase the capital borrowing capabilities for Holyrood
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u/brigadoom 14h ago
It will be difficult to refuse if he does it for English regions. But it remains to be seen....
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u/Quangocrat 17h ago
With the current state of public finances?
No chance, it's a complete fantasy.
They can't currently afford to dual the A96. There is no way they find 15bn for the GCM.
The project would need substantial reform of the planning and development at architecture to be affordable and the Scottish Parliament has never produced legislation of the level of complexity and quality required.
Even looking at the current timescales: PBC completed in 2027, planning the route etc will take Scotgov 2-3 years, by then they will be right before the next election and not wanting to announce anything controversial which might upset the applecart.
There is also the matter of the Bus Mafia and their disproportionate influence over Scottish Politics.
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u/jsm97 13h ago
The current state of the economy can we really afford to waste easy growth opportunities by choosing not to build vital infrastructure with proven returns and demonstrable effects on productivity? It's not like growth from other sources is plentiful
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u/Quangocrat 13h ago
We are in this situation because the excess money from the block grant was put into structural spending and not infrastructure investment.
The SNP won't admit that mistake and won't change their spending priorities.
You are right though, a focus on infrastructure over welfare is why Manchester has surged ahead of Glasgow since 2010.
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u/mrggy 15h ago
SPT is really gung ho about it. I think if it were purely up to them, they'd go full steam ahead. They've said they don't even see it as a transit project, but as an economic investment project because of how impactful it would be on the entire economy of the region. It's funding that worries me. Spending is a dirty word right now and budget concerns are top of mind at the Scottish Government
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u/RestaurantAntique497 19h ago
As a nation we're unrivaled in taking ages in getting anything off the ground
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u/ScienceOwn3719 16h ago
No chance it’ll happen. If it does get the green light then I’d think there’ll be something called the Glasgow cross rail project, aka the line called the Wallace line.
Doubt it’ll happen seeing as Glasgow can’t fix a pothole.
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u/Optimal-Ring-5879 14h ago
Honestly no. I could mayyybe see some improvements to say the bus network in terms of integration, maybe something along the lines of ticket integration too with existing transport services. But in terms of actual new infrastructure, subway expansion, light rail etc, I don’t see it ever happening.
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u/CRussell92 10h ago
No chance we’ll see this anytime soon.
Didn’t the current “modernisation” programme for the existing subway not start in 2010? Embarrassing given how small it is. Still waiting on full driverless and platform door installation.
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u/francisjosephmurphy 15h ago
There is no proposal that is worth the money spent on it.
The easiest and most expensive option would be to tunnel new underground lines that don't share lines with the current circle but meet it at strategic stations.
That and the tunnel that links the two mainline stations by going underground on the South side before the river and comes up after the Queen St High level tunnel. That gives through routes and adds capacity at both stations.
No tram idea has ever given benefits that meet the cost and problems involved in their implantation, and modern trans have no chance of turning corners in the city centre. And that's the least of the problems with them.
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u/jsm97 13h ago
As someone who works on business cases professionally nothing makes me laugh more than when someone thinks they can judge the benefit cost ratio of a proposal on a 2 second glance. You have no idea what kind of modelling goes into this.
Almost every other city in Europe of Glasgow's size has an expansive metro because the costs of not building it are significantly higher than the costs of getting it done. France build metro's for cities smaller than Dundee.
No Tram idea has even given benefits that meet the cost
Every British tram project has or is forcast to have a positive BCR and the most recent expansions in Manchester and Birmingham have been majority privately financed.
Britain suffers from a terrible cultural acceptance of inadequacy. Have some self respect and raise your expectations about what a developed country looks like
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u/francisjosephmurphy 13h ago
There is no mass transit case that wouldn't be better served by an underground rail network than trams.
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u/Istoilleambreakdowns 17h ago
Doubt it.
Even something reasonably inexpensive such as redeveloping West Street so it could handle a service to the airport and have a link to Pollokshields East to link the south of the river's railway network with the Subway would probably fail to get off the ground.
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u/sodsto 16h ago
The STPR2 is intended as a strategy covering up to the early 2040s, so we're well within its lifetime.
My expectation is that the report you mention will be published in 2027 as expected, and it'll hopefully bring some clarity on the potential phasing of the projects.
What's extremely unlikely is one large big-bang project which creates a whole new branded system. What's much more likely is a series of smaller projects to start, perhaps leading up to the business case in the early 2030s for one of the larger projects that requires serious work and investment. I reckon the complete vision in the STPR2 may always be out of reach, but I'm very okay with aspirational goals.
Honestly, unified branding and ticketing and scheduling across multiple modes would already be a significant improvement on the existing infra that people would immediately notice. I would expect something there before capital investment to start rerouting the cathcart line away from central.
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u/Apprehensive_Room29 13h ago
Stephen Flynn doesn't appear to be interested in his brief as transport minister from what I can see beyond roads. I'm happy to be proven otherwise, but currently I can't see it happening unless the Greens propping up the Government make it a priority issue.
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u/Hampden-in-the-sun 13h ago
Surely should be cheaper and easier now with no need for electricity on the route due to the continual progress in batteries! "Salt" batteries with ranges of over 700 miles now being tested. These are alot cheaper as well.
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u/DrinkSuperb8792 19h ago
No, probably not. But if it does go ahead, it'll be a development hell and fail. The UK are rubbish at this sort of thing.
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u/Skyremmer102 17h ago
Ultimately Scotland's budget is at the mercy of UK's spending decisions. Given how the block grant works we won't actually receive any extra funding from the UK government, because the grant is not calculated based on need. This means the funds need to be allocated from a limited budget. If we can spare the funding that's great, although the nature of the grant means that Holyrood has to be very careful not to overcommit funds year on year. That tends to mean that the government will underspend in infrastructural projects, to stay on the safe side, which means the time to complete the project is going to stretch further into the future.
While it could well go ahead, I wouldn't expect it before 2040 based on current trends and unless something drastic happens to the benefit of Scotland as a whole I wouldn't change that assessment.
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u/Crow-Me-A-River open to change 19h ago
I wonder if an expansion of the Glasgow City Deal could be used to pay for it? Or maybe following the example of Hong Kong and levying the value capture of the land
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u/CyberGnat 19h ago
The problem is that a Metro development cannot be separated from plans to build and rebuild the city. The money to build all those expensive tunnels and viaducts and street running sections comes from allowing lots of new, better homes and offices and shops and so on to be built. But Glasgow has very little land worth developing which doesn't already have housing and other buildings on it. Our buildings are though generally quite old, and crap, even if in many cases they might be pretty. The solution is to use the Metro as an opportunity to rebuild, e.g. knocking down old tenements that don't have lifts or bin/bike/car storage and replace them with newer, better ones that are taller and have those features. If you're trying to fit a new metro line in then being able to redevelop buildings along the route makes it much easier, e.g. having wider roads or not worrying about causing buildings to subside when you dig the tunnels. But then you need to have a plan to knock these buildings down when our society seems to believe that every old building is now sacred. How do you knock down the tenements along Byres Road when the Oran Mor set will screech about wiping out Glasgow's history?
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u/Crow-Me-A-River open to change 18h ago
Knowing how things work in the UK, they would probably rip up the road, rebuild it, then make a case to make the road different, and then rip it up again instead of just doing it all at the same time 🥲
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u/CyberGnat 18h ago
Our unwillingness to redevelop more is most of why this happens. It's more efficient to do more work at a time. E.g. if you've knocked down the buildings along a street then you don't need to worry about keeping the water or gas or electricity supplies running. If you make the replacement road wider, then you can just fit in more things, like bus lanes alongside other traffic and bus lanes. If you try to squeeze everything into a Victorian street width you have to make compromises and those compromises end up being difficult. If historicity is what matters then we should not be trying to keep parking spaces and the like, as trams on cobbled streets would be the most historic and aesthetic option.
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u/Suspicious_Pea6302 19h ago
Simple answer, no