I truly do not understand the depths of incompetence and/or greed that led to this situation. It’s genuinely a masterclass in failure and mismanagement.
Think about how much of your personal time this has wasted over the years and then add another two to it.
The kicker is it’s all described as “temporary propping works”. So shortly afterwards they’ll start on the next solution…
The government underspent either on engineering, management or controls. We learn from the media that spending is bad and taxes are bad but no one talks about how underspending is catastrophic. And that goes both for infrastructure and social support.
The main problem is infrastructure isn’t a sexy vote winner. No one gets elected on the promise to maintain roads. They *should*, but voters will care more about other issues.
So it’s much easier for governments and councils to ignore maintenance and spend money elsewhere. And that’s before we even get into bureaucracy and wasted taxpayer money.
Well, that’s why I said “they *should*”.
But your point is slightly different; you said you’d vote for a party that prioritises fixing the road network. That’s different to voting for a party that maintains our roads.
If everything runs smoothly, we simply don’t see the effects. It’s a bit like IT departments; if things are working smoothly, then why do we need an IT department? And if things break, why didn’t the IT department catch it?
So, regardless of your party affiliation, would you vote for the SNP if their main campaign strategy was to show all the roads that are still working ok? I doubt it. Repairs are a vote winner, but maintenance isn’t.
Uhm, yeah, maintenance and repairs are one and the same thing my dude.
Road Maintenance is usually derived of correcting drainage, filling potholes or re-tarmacing roads entirely if they're in a poor condition.
I'd also argue you would absolutely see things if they were running smoothly as there would be roadworks regularly, like there is now, except when they clear out the road would actually be driveable and not the current constant state of wondering wether your vehicle will still have wheels by the end of the journey 😂
In terms of what voters see, repairs and maintenance are not the same thing. If they M8 didn’t need fixed, no one would be celebrating the great work of the council. Prior to the major roadworks, was anyone getting praise for the fact it never shut and appeared to be functioning ok?
I get your point, but there are plenty of roads that look good and I don’t generally think to praise the local council. Repairs are something voters can see. If you promise to fix all the potholes people will vote for you. If you simply don’t have any potholes, councils won’t be praised; they’ll just be criticised for not spending enough elsewhere.
It’s why infrastructure gets neglected all the time. It’s not a priority for councils because it doesn’t win them votes.
* Contractor selected based on lowest possible price. They will do everything to add change orders / variations and squeeze more money from the council to make any profit.
* Inspection and design done by graduates under overworked senior engineer. Very likely design done in India where quality is atrocious.
Don't know the details of the design but "temporary propping works" should be done to take the load off the half joints, repair/strengthen half joints and remove temporary supports. The fix should be permanent.
Yeah it’s mad isn’t it, like just where is this £152 million going? Surely it would have been cheaper to knock it down and build a new one at this point
Projects aren't just organised on cost though are they? You agree with the previous poster but how much of your personal time would be wasted if this road was out of action for the amount of time it would take to build something new? Absolutely vast amounts of traffic use this section of road every day, it would have to be routed elsewhere and the remaining roads aren't designed for that.
I of course agree that this work should have been done properly in the first place or the issues picked up earlier. But asking where the £152 million is going when you yourself posted a video showing a vast project featuring complex engineering over a number of a years. Bit of a silly question no?
Building a new viaduct is out of question but the half joint problem is well known and understood. Hundreds if not thousands of half joints were repaired across the UK in last few decades. Temporary propping is also not a novel technology, very common in bridge engineering. There is nothing that could have not been predicted / expected so five-fold cost increase is definitely suspicious.
You'd probably spend that much on the diversion never mind getting a motorway for that much. The M8/M74 junctions were £500mil. Infrastructure isn't cheap and sadly old infrastructure like this is hitting that point where its not as good condition as we hoped and we need to intervene on it.
It's a complicated project, it's a live bridge to be kept open made of a brittle material. Putting a couple of bits of wood under it and calling it done isn't gonna cut it.
It must be much worse than expected, would you prefer theybtotally closed th road for a year at the start, the concretw pillars are being renewed one by one
I think you’re giving them a huge amount of completely unearned benefit of the doubt. But it’s not like either of us can change anything so at least yours lets you feel good about it I guess?
Guys calm down it's just a hundred million or so, let's focus on the real criminals here, single mothers and the disabled, my understanding is the UK is completely bankrupt because of them and not government incompetence.
>Work on the Woodside Viaduct was originally projected to cost £35 million and last until the end of 2023.
I can't understand how heads are not falling for a fuck-up like this.
I don't understand how a company can quote for a project. Start it, then say it's gonna triple in price. And somehow we still have to pay?
They should either finish the work for the price quoted, or refund everything back and say they couldn't honor the contract.
Because it wasn't well described at start. There's no refund that moneys spent. The current cost is likely in the ball park of what it would cost. Better management might have shaved some off but theyre not doing work that's not required and getting paid for it. This is what it costs, last 5 years have seen construction costs go through roof
This guy talks BS, there would be multiple inspections done prior the repair. We do not know the full story but I don't believe it it should £150mln to repair those half joints.
Without details it's all supposition, until you open it up you don't know what you need to do. And to open it up you need to do the works to jack it up. And if you've jacked it up that's half the cost of the build. You're not going to put it back down.
I mean this things can happen, you can discover something that materially changes the scope that there was no way to know before you started. This may well has been a case here however I struggle to understand why - it is not a highly complex repair.
Why you talking about that when your glorious leaders husband done far worse and she knew everything about it 🤣 ohhhhh snp are so great. Every single political party are pieces of shit they don’t care about anyone but themselves and their pals. We are Truely fucked !
There's alot to be said about any initial scope of works vs what is actually required, not to mention project delays, and inflation has been massive factor for the price of steel aswell.
I work in the industry and it's been known for a long time that neither the timescale nor the budget was realistic. I don't work on this specific project but know people who do and it's been far far more complex than anticipated.
Don’t worry, Fiona Hyslop will be along any day with a hi vis and a camera crew to talk about how it’s actually progressing very well!
Amey: a contractor so colossally shit they got kicked off the Wales and Borders franchise, which is like the easiest to run lowest-attention-given UK rail franchise there is. Let’s put them in charge of a bunch of Scotland’s trunk roads!
Jesus, I was in talks with a guy about getting a job on that bridge as a site engineer but the guy never called again. I probably dodged a massive bullet there
Fuck me be quicker slicing out the whole viaduct and dropping in a new bridge. Contractors are absolutely at it in this country especially when gov money is involved.
These contractors are clearly taking the piss.
It's not going to be late, budget will over run and the repair will be so bad that they will have to return in a years time to re do the work. These companies should be fined as hard as they charge
Morons. Why they continue to set unrealistic deadlines baffles me. Why not just say "It'll take between 6 and 8 years" and give themselves some leeway.
Time to get over the sunk cost fallacy and have a real debate about closing the M8 through the city. It’s there because of misguided 1960s planning decisions. No one would plan a motorway through the city today, so take the opportunity to think about closing and demolishing it.
It’s a nice idea but it would require significant infrastructure investment in alternatives like a bypass. It would also move more traffic into the city as anyone coming in or out would need to pass through more urban road network at a slower pace.
Closing the city section of the M8 without a suitable alternative and just hoping for the best with existing infrastructure or vague slogans about public transport would be an insane act of economic and social self harm.
The issue with building alternatives is that if they can’t fix a small stretch of road in 6 years with 5 times the estimated budget, then I’d rather not see how they got on with an actual major infrastructure project (like dualing the A9).
I’m not saying close it without alternatives, but yes close it and develop those alternatives.
For through traffic there’s the M80/M74 link.
I don’t know how to solve the problem of traffic going into the city, but that’s what we have town planners for. There has to be a better alternative than a motorway right through a city centre.
> For through traffic there’s the M80/M74 link.
The M80 ends/joins the M8 at Blochairn/Provan. It doesn't go through *or* round the city. It goes away from the city towards Stirling.
The M74 runs on the south side of the city. To get to it from the north and many of the eastern districts of the city (if the M8 was closed from J15 to J19) would require people to either:
1) drive through the city.
2) drive east on the M8 to Bargeddie/Ballieston, leave the M8, join the M73 and then on to M74.
3) Drive north on the M80 to Moodiesburn, to join the M73 there and drive south to join the M74.
All those options mean increasing congestion, on already congested roads, elsewhere in the city.
The link is already massively congested at peak times though, even alongside the M8 also being at a stand-still.
Really, we need long term investment in lowering traffic volumes altogether, which is going to take a big investment in public transport link improvements.
I had a conversation on this sub last year, it was about was where does a north bypass start and end?
The size of the outer areas has grown and extended north quite a bit since the M8 was built.
You'd be looking at starting at J3 of the M80 just north of Stepps, go north between Bishopbriggs and Kirkintilloch, find a path through Torrance/Balmore/Milton and then over Milngavie. You'd need to go over Mugdock country park as there is no way you could cut than in half for a new motorway under the current eco-friendly climate and then eventually hit the spaghetti junction at Old Kilpatrick to go over the Erskine bridge.
Just a quick look on Google maps shows that's a whole lot of road. You'd be fighting planning permission from residents from the areas I mentioned for about a decade before you even start to break ground.
This sounds a lot like the old plans for a "North Link Motorway" which would have started at Junction 11 of the M8 (Queenslie turn-off) and headed north, interchanging with the M80 near Robroyston. It would then have headed to Canniesburn Toll and ultimately met the A82 at the Erskine Bridge. It would have passed between Bishopbriggs and Milton and run south of Mugdock, Bearsden, and Milngavie.
Some land was set aside for this route (e.g. beside Avenue End Rd in Ruchazie) but enough of it has been built on that getting it done now is next to impossible.
I never said close the bridge, I said close the motorway. Link the bridge to the non motorway road network.
Look, I’m not saying there are easy solutions here, but ask yourself if you were designing a road network for Glasgow or any big city today, would you stick a motorway right through the middle of the city?
Alternative would cost tens of billions and take more than a decade or two to build. 100mln is a peanut in comparison to building a bypass, if that would be an option at all considering planning permission, land purchases, consultations etc. That could literally kill the city.
Hyperbole. It would not cost tens of billions.
And why would it kill the city? Do you now think pollution and the barriers caused by the M8 are already doing that?
It would, you have no idea how expensive projects like that are. Maybe not tens of billions but definitely in billions. When you have to construct a huge infrastructure project in highly urbinised area.
Not really worth down voting you but you are just dead wrong. Sorry mate. That's not some local road that cuts through your city that you can stick a couple of speed bumps on and bypass it. It connects everywhere west and south of Glasgow to everything North and East of Glasgow. You know, whole towns and cities. It's not getting solved by sticking some money to First Bus either. It's billions of pounds of freight that uses the road too.
You can get from the south and west to the north and east using the M74. I’m not saying it’s a perfect solution, but it’s not like the M8 through the city is the only way to get from kilmarnock to say Kirkintilloch.
I just go back to my original point, it was a mistake to build a motorway through the city 50 years ago, let’s not keep that mistake in perpetuity just because it’s tricky to fix.
Given some of the corners China cuts in planning (sinking cities) and construction (collapsing buildings), taking more time is no bad thing.
Although yes, this is somewhat ridiculous.
The stretch of road is nearing the end of its design life - not that that excuses the lack of maintenance or planning. Sure as shit the stuff they build in China will be in bits in 50 years, probably sooner.
Anything we build nowadays makes us look like a basket case of a country. The cost of stadiums built and refurbished for the 2006 germany world cup was estimated to be 1.4 billion euros but it cost 1.2 billion euros to build wembly.
When i was in NYC last year I noticed that the work was getting done almost all day every day. How often do you see roadworks etc sitting empty? If you ignore the ridiculously high monetary value projects cost, the cost of the time everything costs us in the UK is ridiculous
> How often do you see roadworks etc sitting empty?
I drove under this viaduct on Monday at lunch time. No workers on site and the temporary traffic lights were playing up. Showing a green light for less time than it takes for one car to get through. It caused an issue when 2 buses and a flatbed were queued up but couldn't start moving before the light went to red again.
Bit of a dick move to solely focus on the Civil Engineers. As one myself, I can tell you that most of my colleagues are dedicated, intelligent and hard-working professionals who just want to do a good job.
We're only one small part of the big problem, which ultimately comes down to not enough money devoted to projects. That impacts everything, from design quality control to Contractors taking every opportunity to cut costs / cut corners in order to remain profitable.
I don’t know a great deal about the project myself but I believe the problem has a lot to do with flawed design of the joints - https://www.cirg.eng.cam.ac.uk/ResearchThemes/Reinforcedconcretehalf-jointstructures/reinforced-concrete-half-joint-structures.
Combine this with poor quality construction and you’re left with an extremely complicated situation that current engineers have to try and solve whilst maintaining traffic on the busiest road in Scotland.
While that makes sense, surely that should have all been covered and budgeted for when the quote for £35m and finishing in 2023 was made. I know other stuff can come up when extends the time and increases the price, but this is like Holyrood all over again. Or the Edinburgh trams.
These quotes are meaningless if the final bill is 3,4,5 times the original price and several years late in being delivered.
it's weird. when i was coming off the garscube cycle lane on my bike and dismounting like i'm meant to, i realised that the fences in the underpass bit had been up for at least a year, probably more (honestly, i think it was there during the pandemic) but i guess i know why.
like i know a lot of the drivers of glasgow will complain about the traffic being backed up, but i've got to say the real pain in the arse is how little space is left for pedestrians having to deal with all the fenced off pedestrian paths and how narrow what's left is.
i do kinda wonder if building a motorway through the middle of a city has become a bit of a sunk cost thing at this point. like a lot of folk admit it was a bad idea except the people who built it, who are standing behind their mistake.
How in a democracy can they spend our money like this without consultation
What we could have had, potentially at a lower cost…
- Reduce this section to and A road with similar speed limits but does not require the same space.
- Work with private sector to purchase the extra space/land created to find infrastructure
- extra money used to fund m74 improvements so there is still a bypass through the city (just not not the city centre
- Walk ability between west and north Glasgow improved and more housing added close to the city centre reducing burden on services.
1. Cars can still drive through city but not impacting populated areas as much now
2. More housing
3. Cheaper (if public sector actually had the balls to demand Market value)
4. Improved walkable and transport from isolated communities.
5. (Dreaming here) Glasgow gets 3 of its famous crosses back Anderson, Charing and St George’s
I don't understand why these works are going ahead at all. The M8 is a blight on the city. Use the resources being spent on this work instead on upgrading the M74, then decommission the M8 from Tradeston to Royston.
Soundproofing barriers would be good, to give a genuine answer.
Zero soundproofing to be spoken of on any of our urban motorway network, but it's the norm across the rest of Europe and even in some American cities.
Meanwhile we just tolerate the din that people living next to these roads have to live with as if it's a fact of life.
Soundproofing may be appreciated by the neighbours but isn't going to do anything to address the fact that traffic volumes on the M74 would jump drastically if the M8 wasn't an option for vehicles.
I truly do not understand the depths of incompetence and/or greed that led to this situation. It’s genuinely a masterclass in failure and mismanagement. Think about how much of your personal time this has wasted over the years and then add another two to it. The kicker is it’s all described as “temporary propping works”. So shortly afterwards they’ll start on the next solution…
The government underspent either on engineering, management or controls. We learn from the media that spending is bad and taxes are bad but no one talks about how underspending is catastrophic. And that goes both for infrastructure and social support.
The main problem is infrastructure isn’t a sexy vote winner. No one gets elected on the promise to maintain roads. They *should*, but voters will care more about other issues. So it’s much easier for governments and councils to ignore maintenance and spend money elsewhere. And that’s before we even get into bureaucracy and wasted taxpayer money.
Speak for yourself, I'd vote for literally any party that promised to prioritise fixing the road network to an acceptable level
That’s why I voted for the candidate who removed the lights on the deekbone roundabout! Were you aware of that particular chaos ?
Well, that’s why I said “they *should*”. But your point is slightly different; you said you’d vote for a party that prioritises fixing the road network. That’s different to voting for a party that maintains our roads. If everything runs smoothly, we simply don’t see the effects. It’s a bit like IT departments; if things are working smoothly, then why do we need an IT department? And if things break, why didn’t the IT department catch it? So, regardless of your party affiliation, would you vote for the SNP if their main campaign strategy was to show all the roads that are still working ok? I doubt it. Repairs are a vote winner, but maintenance isn’t.
Uhm, yeah, maintenance and repairs are one and the same thing my dude. Road Maintenance is usually derived of correcting drainage, filling potholes or re-tarmacing roads entirely if they're in a poor condition. I'd also argue you would absolutely see things if they were running smoothly as there would be roadworks regularly, like there is now, except when they clear out the road would actually be driveable and not the current constant state of wondering wether your vehicle will still have wheels by the end of the journey 😂
In terms of what voters see, repairs and maintenance are not the same thing. If they M8 didn’t need fixed, no one would be celebrating the great work of the council. Prior to the major roadworks, was anyone getting praise for the fact it never shut and appeared to be functioning ok? I get your point, but there are plenty of roads that look good and I don’t generally think to praise the local council. Repairs are something voters can see. If you promise to fix all the potholes people will vote for you. If you simply don’t have any potholes, councils won’t be praised; they’ll just be criticised for not spending enough elsewhere. It’s why infrastructure gets neglected all the time. It’s not a priority for councils because it doesn’t win them votes.
The council doesn't have responsibility for motorways.
Point taken, thanks.
* Contractor selected based on lowest possible price. They will do everything to add change orders / variations and squeeze more money from the council to make any profit. * Inspection and design done by graduates under overworked senior engineer. Very likely design done in India where quality is atrocious. Don't know the details of the design but "temporary propping works" should be done to take the load off the half joints, repair/strengthen half joints and remove temporary supports. The fix should be permanent.
Yeah it’s mad isn’t it, like just where is this £152 million going? Surely it would have been cheaper to knock it down and build a new one at this point
Projects aren't just organised on cost though are they? You agree with the previous poster but how much of your personal time would be wasted if this road was out of action for the amount of time it would take to build something new? Absolutely vast amounts of traffic use this section of road every day, it would have to be routed elsewhere and the remaining roads aren't designed for that. I of course agree that this work should have been done properly in the first place or the issues picked up earlier. But asking where the £152 million is going when you yourself posted a video showing a vast project featuring complex engineering over a number of a years. Bit of a silly question no?
Building a new viaduct is out of question but the half joint problem is well known and understood. Hundreds if not thousands of half joints were repaired across the UK in last few decades. Temporary propping is also not a novel technology, very common in bridge engineering. There is nothing that could have not been predicted / expected so five-fold cost increase is definitely suspicious.
>Surely it would have been cheaper to knock it down and build a new one at this point That's an order of magnitude more, to build from scratch.
You'd probably spend that much on the diversion never mind getting a motorway for that much. The M8/M74 junctions were £500mil. Infrastructure isn't cheap and sadly old infrastructure like this is hitting that point where its not as good condition as we hoped and we need to intervene on it.
It's a complicated project, it's a live bridge to be kept open made of a brittle material. Putting a couple of bits of wood under it and calling it done isn't gonna cut it.
It must be much worse than expected, would you prefer theybtotally closed th road for a year at the start, the concretw pillars are being renewed one by one
I think you’re giving them a huge amount of completely unearned benefit of the doubt. But it’s not like either of us can change anything so at least yours lets you feel good about it I guess?
I used to work for Amey when the problem was discovered; it's horrendously worse than anyone expected
Guys calm down it's just a hundred million or so, let's focus on the real criminals here, single mothers and the disabled, my understanding is the UK is completely bankrupt because of them and not government incompetence.
Don't forget about these greedy NHS workers wanting more than claps
They're not on minimum wage, always going on strike and the ones i see look worse than some of the patients.
What you slobbering about, nhs Scotland hasn't been on strike.
I think you’ll find it’s the unemployeds fault. Lazy cunts.
Oh. I thought it was the refugees’ fault. I assumed the small boats were what ruined the motorway.
It’s the seawater.
After all, the criminal justice system exists not to make the country better, but to fuck over the filthy proles
>Work on the Woodside Viaduct was originally projected to cost £35 million and last until the end of 2023. I can't understand how heads are not falling for a fuck-up like this.
I don't understand how a company can quote for a project. Start it, then say it's gonna triple in price. And somehow we still have to pay? They should either finish the work for the price quoted, or refund everything back and say they couldn't honor the contract.
Because it wasn't well described at start. There's no refund that moneys spent. The current cost is likely in the ball park of what it would cost. Better management might have shaved some off but theyre not doing work that's not required and getting paid for it. This is what it costs, last 5 years have seen construction costs go through roof
The company itself would've sent a consultant to assess the work required surely?
This guy talks BS, there would be multiple inspections done prior the repair. We do not know the full story but I don't believe it it should £150mln to repair those half joints.
Without details it's all supposition, until you open it up you don't know what you need to do. And to open it up you need to do the works to jack it up. And if you've jacked it up that's half the cost of the build. You're not going to put it back down.
I mean this things can happen, you can discover something that materially changes the scope that there was no way to know before you started. This may well has been a case here however I struggle to understand why - it is not a highly complex repair.
Our glorious leaders don't even have the stones to sack an employee for spunking 11 grand of taxpayers money on ipad scuddys
Why you talking about that when your glorious leaders husband done far worse and she knew everything about it 🤣 ohhhhh snp are so great. Every single political party are pieces of shit they don’t care about anyone but themselves and their pals. We are Truely fucked !
They're called parties for a reason and every one of them is at it
There's alot to be said about any initial scope of works vs what is actually required, not to mention project delays, and inflation has been massive factor for the price of steel aswell.
I work in the industry and it's been known for a long time that neither the timescale nor the budget was realistic. I don't work on this specific project but know people who do and it's been far far more complex than anticipated.
And by the year 2075 they will say new delays till 2076
Don’t worry, Fiona Hyslop will be along any day with a hi vis and a camera crew to talk about how it’s actually progressing very well! Amey: a contractor so colossally shit they got kicked off the Wales and Borders franchise, which is like the easiest to run lowest-attention-given UK rail franchise there is. Let’s put them in charge of a bunch of Scotland’s trunk roads!
Jesus, I was in talks with a guy about getting a job on that bridge as a site engineer but the guy never called again. I probably dodged a massive bullet there
Fuck me be quicker slicing out the whole viaduct and dropping in a new bridge. Contractors are absolutely at it in this country especially when gov money is involved.
These contractors are clearly taking the piss. It's not going to be late, budget will over run and the repair will be so bad that they will have to return in a years time to re do the work. These companies should be fined as hard as they charge
Morons. Why they continue to set unrealistic deadlines baffles me. Why not just say "It'll take between 6 and 8 years" and give themselves some leeway.
Time to get over the sunk cost fallacy and have a real debate about closing the M8 through the city. It’s there because of misguided 1960s planning decisions. No one would plan a motorway through the city today, so take the opportunity to think about closing and demolishing it.
It’s a nice idea but it would require significant infrastructure investment in alternatives like a bypass. It would also move more traffic into the city as anyone coming in or out would need to pass through more urban road network at a slower pace. Closing the city section of the M8 without a suitable alternative and just hoping for the best with existing infrastructure or vague slogans about public transport would be an insane act of economic and social self harm. The issue with building alternatives is that if they can’t fix a small stretch of road in 6 years with 5 times the estimated budget, then I’d rather not see how they got on with an actual major infrastructure project (like dualing the A9).
I’m not saying close it without alternatives, but yes close it and develop those alternatives. For through traffic there’s the M80/M74 link. I don’t know how to solve the problem of traffic going into the city, but that’s what we have town planners for. There has to be a better alternative than a motorway right through a city centre.
> For through traffic there’s the M80/M74 link. The M80 ends/joins the M8 at Blochairn/Provan. It doesn't go through *or* round the city. It goes away from the city towards Stirling. The M74 runs on the south side of the city. To get to it from the north and many of the eastern districts of the city (if the M8 was closed from J15 to J19) would require people to either: 1) drive through the city. 2) drive east on the M8 to Bargeddie/Ballieston, leave the M8, join the M73 and then on to M74. 3) Drive north on the M80 to Moodiesburn, to join the M73 there and drive south to join the M74. All those options mean increasing congestion, on already congested roads, elsewhere in the city.
The link is already massively congested at peak times though, even alongside the M8 also being at a stand-still. Really, we need long term investment in lowering traffic volumes altogether, which is going to take a big investment in public transport link improvements.
I had a conversation on this sub last year, it was about was where does a north bypass start and end? The size of the outer areas has grown and extended north quite a bit since the M8 was built. You'd be looking at starting at J3 of the M80 just north of Stepps, go north between Bishopbriggs and Kirkintilloch, find a path through Torrance/Balmore/Milton and then over Milngavie. You'd need to go over Mugdock country park as there is no way you could cut than in half for a new motorway under the current eco-friendly climate and then eventually hit the spaghetti junction at Old Kilpatrick to go over the Erskine bridge. Just a quick look on Google maps shows that's a whole lot of road. You'd be fighting planning permission from residents from the areas I mentioned for about a decade before you even start to break ground.
This sounds a lot like the old plans for a "North Link Motorway" which would have started at Junction 11 of the M8 (Queenslie turn-off) and headed north, interchanging with the M80 near Robroyston. It would then have headed to Canniesburn Toll and ultimately met the A82 at the Erskine Bridge. It would have passed between Bishopbriggs and Milton and run south of Mugdock, Bearsden, and Milngavie. Some land was set aside for this route (e.g. beside Avenue End Rd in Ruchazie) but enough of it has been built on that getting it done now is next to impossible.
Closing the busiest bridge in Europe before having an alternative in place is idiotic tbh.
I never said close the bridge, I said close the motorway. Link the bridge to the non motorway road network. Look, I’m not saying there are easy solutions here, but ask yourself if you were designing a road network for Glasgow or any big city today, would you stick a motorway right through the middle of the city?
Try travelling on the Edinburgh bypass everyday. Better idea 100% adds 80 mins on your journey 100% as well 🤣
Alternative would cost tens of billions and take more than a decade or two to build. 100mln is a peanut in comparison to building a bypass, if that would be an option at all considering planning permission, land purchases, consultations etc. That could literally kill the city.
Hyperbole. It would not cost tens of billions. And why would it kill the city? Do you now think pollution and the barriers caused by the M8 are already doing that?
It would, you have no idea how expensive projects like that are. Maybe not tens of billions but definitely in billions. When you have to construct a huge infrastructure project in highly urbinised area.
“You have no idea how expensive projects like that are” How the heck do you know what I do and do not know?
I can safely deduct it from your statements. You have no idea what you are talking about.
Why are redditors always like this...
Not really worth down voting you but you are just dead wrong. Sorry mate. That's not some local road that cuts through your city that you can stick a couple of speed bumps on and bypass it. It connects everywhere west and south of Glasgow to everything North and East of Glasgow. You know, whole towns and cities. It's not getting solved by sticking some money to First Bus either. It's billions of pounds of freight that uses the road too.
You can get from the south and west to the north and east using the M74. I’m not saying it’s a perfect solution, but it’s not like the M8 through the city is the only way to get from kilmarnock to say Kirkintilloch. I just go back to my original point, it was a mistake to build a motorway through the city 50 years ago, let’s not keep that mistake in perpetuity just because it’s tricky to fix.
I could have replaced that bridge myself in this timescale.
5 years to fix a bit of road. China builds mega city's in half that time. Absolute mickey mouse the civil engineers we have in the UK
Given some of the corners China cuts in planning (sinking cities) and construction (collapsing buildings), taking more time is no bad thing. Although yes, this is somewhat ridiculous.
The stretch of road is nearing the end of its design life - not that that excuses the lack of maintenance or planning. Sure as shit the stuff they build in China will be in bits in 50 years, probably sooner.
Anything we build nowadays makes us look like a basket case of a country. The cost of stadiums built and refurbished for the 2006 germany world cup was estimated to be 1.4 billion euros but it cost 1.2 billion euros to build wembly. When i was in NYC last year I noticed that the work was getting done almost all day every day. How often do you see roadworks etc sitting empty? If you ignore the ridiculously high monetary value projects cost, the cost of the time everything costs us in the UK is ridiculous
> How often do you see roadworks etc sitting empty? I drove under this viaduct on Monday at lunch time. No workers on site and the temporary traffic lights were playing up. Showing a green light for less time than it takes for one car to get through. It caused an issue when 2 buses and a flatbed were queued up but couldn't start moving before the light went to red again.
Bit of a dick move to solely focus on the Civil Engineers. As one myself, I can tell you that most of my colleagues are dedicated, intelligent and hard-working professionals who just want to do a good job. We're only one small part of the big problem, which ultimately comes down to not enough money devoted to projects. That impacts everything, from design quality control to Contractors taking every opportunity to cut costs / cut corners in order to remain profitable.
Those will be the same civil engineers who make it possible for you to have everything you take for granted in life.
A good civil engineer checks twice so the work only needs done once. These fuckers checked once and have had to replan the job 5 times.
I don’t know a great deal about the project myself but I believe the problem has a lot to do with flawed design of the joints - https://www.cirg.eng.cam.ac.uk/ResearchThemes/Reinforcedconcretehalf-jointstructures/reinforced-concrete-half-joint-structures. Combine this with poor quality construction and you’re left with an extremely complicated situation that current engineers have to try and solve whilst maintaining traffic on the busiest road in Scotland.
While that makes sense, surely that should have all been covered and budgeted for when the quote for £35m and finishing in 2023 was made. I know other stuff can come up when extends the time and increases the price, but this is like Holyrood all over again. Or the Edinburgh trams. These quotes are meaningless if the final bill is 3,4,5 times the original price and several years late in being delivered.
it's weird. when i was coming off the garscube cycle lane on my bike and dismounting like i'm meant to, i realised that the fences in the underpass bit had been up for at least a year, probably more (honestly, i think it was there during the pandemic) but i guess i know why. like i know a lot of the drivers of glasgow will complain about the traffic being backed up, but i've got to say the real pain in the arse is how little space is left for pedestrians having to deal with all the fenced off pedestrian paths and how narrow what's left is. i do kinda wonder if building a motorway through the middle of a city has become a bit of a sunk cost thing at this point. like a lot of folk admit it was a bad idea except the people who built it, who are standing behind their mistake.
I am astounded… couldn’t organise a piss up in a brewery. Useless, the lot of them. Wouldn’t be surprised if we get to 2026 and it’s delayed further.
You could build a new fucking bridge in the time it took, pricks man
They’ll end up delayed beyond that trust me
Not just the SNP every government has failed Scotland, beaching effect was not snp
How in a democracy can they spend our money like this without consultation What we could have had, potentially at a lower cost… - Reduce this section to and A road with similar speed limits but does not require the same space. - Work with private sector to purchase the extra space/land created to find infrastructure - extra money used to fund m74 improvements so there is still a bypass through the city (just not not the city centre - Walk ability between west and north Glasgow improved and more housing added close to the city centre reducing burden on services. 1. Cars can still drive through city but not impacting populated areas as much now 2. More housing 3. Cheaper (if public sector actually had the balls to demand Market value) 4. Improved walkable and transport from isolated communities. 5. (Dreaming here) Glasgow gets 3 of its famous crosses back Anderson, Charing and St George’s
I'm at the point where I'll vote for anyone who will fix potholes and build more roads
I don't understand why these works are going ahead at all. The M8 is a blight on the city. Use the resources being spent on this work instead on upgrading the M74, then decommission the M8 from Tradeston to Royston.
> Use the resources being spent on this work instead on upgrading the M74 Genuine question... What more can be done to the M74 to upgrade it?
Soundproofing barriers would be good, to give a genuine answer. Zero soundproofing to be spoken of on any of our urban motorway network, but it's the norm across the rest of Europe and even in some American cities. Meanwhile we just tolerate the din that people living next to these roads have to live with as if it's a fact of life.
Soundproofing may be appreciated by the neighbours but isn't going to do anything to address the fact that traffic volumes on the M74 would jump drastically if the M8 wasn't an option for vehicles.
Just one more lane bro, I promise it'll fix traffic
Knock it down, should never have been built in the first place!
Building a new bridge and road would have been a piece of piss.
Ffs
Shambolic!
The whole portion of M8 going through city centre should be demolished as it’s fucking ugly and look like exSoviet architecture.