That wide expanse of pavement in Duke Street needs to be better defined whether through materials or seating or planting or street furniture.
A vast swath of blacktop doesn't really do it.

This is badly needed for Cowcaddens Road, this entrance to Glasgow is concrete jungle and needs to be more inviting!

Lets get the bingo cards at the ready for Colin and Karen who are no doubt smashing the keyboards:

1. Cyclists don't pay road tax
2. It rains in Glasgow
3. Middle class welfare
4. Only middle class people cycle
5. Only upper class people cycle
6. Working classes being forced out of their cars
7. Children can cycle in the roads
8. Only built to service woke students at Cal-Uni
9. Bikes are expensive
10. Something about leftist elites

I would like to understand why leaving the busy road alone while utilizing the quiter McPhater Street which links the university and bus station, then to the Piping Centre, Dundasvale Court, Cowcaddens subway, underpass to New City Road and then onto the West End or up over the hill to the School of Art was not selected as a preferred option.

That is the route I usually cycle when heading towards GRI. I guess using the road network is perhaps more direct, however I would like to see what the options/thought processes are for continued travel once the cycle lanes have ended.

MAMIL being public enemy number one in Glasgow right now.

The swathe of blacktop on Duke St. is a disgrace, the planning application was populated with street trees, which have not materialised, are these new images to be believed?

#5 Bit confused by your comment. The Duke St works aren't due to start until January, so of course the street trees haven't materialised yet?

It's a reference to the Meat Market housing development.

The reality
https://shorturl.at/IywTg

The plan
https://www.urbanrealm.com/news/9626/Dennistoun_apartments_promote_inner_city_living.html

I agree, the housing development should have put trees and broken up the large expanse of pavement with some planting and benches. The large stretch of black tarmac is awful looking!

How will “slashing four traffic lanes down to two” help a “traffic choked intersection???

Transport 1400 strikes again -- generating more congestion where little existed before.

Immature student level hobby-horsing by distressed gentlefolk / middle class absolutists who cannot imagine the working class wanting personal transportation that keeps the rain out.

Turning Port Dundas Road into a cul-de-sac will not stand the test of time / reality / common sense.

Plus rain gardens -- aka litter traps -- will be discredited by the time a spade is put in the ground.

City centre populations if they are too reflect the society around them need weather proof personal transportation if they are going to grow and prosper.

The Victorians built city streets 4 lanes wide for a reason -- the current squeeze on road-space will hurt the city and future generations will wonder why a loud mouthed micro minority was allowed to hobble a city.

It looks like small business and local travel, economy, community etc of any kind is out of fashion these days, am sure the corporate architects who don't get out much think this is just wonderful but people who are actually out in amongst it turning a buck by bike, car, bus etc whatever know that all these recent proposals are an absolute busted flush of chaotic expensive nonsense and could have been done a thousand times sooner and better than this.

Deep breaths...

You forgot if you don't follow 'the narrative' in the correct and proscribed way then you're not an actual person and your opinions certainly don't count.

#12

Middle class welfare - ping!
Weather - ping!
Working class forces out of cars - ping!
Students - ping!
Pretty sure something in there blames 'leftism' -ping!

Not quite enough to win the bingo, but good effort!

(You're on to something about the litter traps, but probably better to blame the idiots who drop the litter than the grass...)

Political progress aka "Leftism" means that more of the working class can afford a car and want the level of flexibility / capability that weather-resilient personal transportation brings.

Last week in Copenhagen -- rain in the afternoon brings the city to a standstill as all the morning bike commuters flood public transport and give Uber a goldmine as they head home without their bikes.

Hour waits plus for a taxi and business grinds to a halt -- these are the lessons that we need to take onboard not just the special pleading of the hobby horsers / ego trippers / the self harmers who are trying to hobble a working city.

FBOT proves the point for cycling infrastructure!

Thank goodness that the cycling infrastructure in Copenhagen exists so that the public transport system and road network is functional for the other 365* days of the year! Excellent point, well made FBOT.

Imagine what Copenhagen would look like if every day people were forced into cars and onto overcrowded public transport. Perhaps a little like Glasgow? Imagine a world where people have to buy a motor vehicle, pay extraordinary amounts for fuel, forced to pay VED, pay to park outside their homes, pay to enter the city, pay to park, MOTs, pay for insurance to cover inevitable breakdowns... Imagine a world where people have to buy tickets for public transport, paying hundreds of pounds a month... Imagine a world where people have to take taxis because the public transport system is overloaded or of poor coverage - the expense of that!

I'm sure the good people of Copenhagen are delighted that they have the option to cycle and not be forced into cars or public transport and 'bring the city to a standstill' every day.

'Hour waits plus for a taxi and business grinds to a halt -- these are the lessons that we need to take onboard' -
Oh, the irony... You describe ONE DAY in Copenhagen as being disastrous yet cant understand that that would be EVERY DAY if they didn't invest in their cycle infrastructure... Eyes roll...

*2024 is a leap year.

Who says cycling is bad?

It's just a case of do this but do it much better than these abominable, expensive and very late and very poor proposals.

If you support them then you must hate cycling and cyclists as they are just so 4th rate its unbelievable.

Improve public transport as well as it is worse than it was 40 years ago and expensive to boot and not a good idea to have all your eggs in one particular badly urban designed basket.

Poor FBOT think these militant supporters of bad cycle infrastructure are leftists, they are totalitarian, corporate, globalists, nothing to do with the left....

Traffic is terrible in Copenhagen.
Plus it rains quite a lot.
Might be linked ...

Lack of urban motorways means that the old school arterial routes are clogged up to the nines with on-grade junctions the main culprit.

And yet many want to boulevard the M8.
Total madness.

Distressed gentlefolk / middle class fantasists just don't want too many of the working class to own cars.

Every part of their worldview / political outlook is based on keeping the lower orders in their proper place through forcing their attention seeking middle class lifestyle onto them no matter what the working class want or even need.

Cycling infrastructure improvements -- fair's fair but nae nonsense.

Unfortunately what we are getting is ridiculously expensive second rate ego trips from a cycling priesthood that can't believe their luck that the money tap is full on and nobody is noticing the waste.

@17
Induced demand is a very real phenomenon and it is without a doubt the case that the M8 urban motorway is the main culprit for Glasgow's current traffic problems. Replacing with an urban boulevard would be the most beneficial solution. Reduced demand = less traffic.
Replace the M8 !

M8 boulevard reality / if it ever comes -- more congestion and less economic activity will be the result.

Car ownership in Glasga is on the up -- and the streets cannot cope with the parking demands.

Middle class absolutism / Transport 1400 vibe won't fix the problem it will just increase it.

What demand is being induced -- the traffic is there through necessity and desire and both won't go away no matter how hard the cycling ultras hope that it will.

A loud mouthed micro minority is currently hobbling transport in the city with public money and it won't end well.

If it worked in Manhattan it will in Glasgow. Get real.

The M8 serves nobody in Glasgow but the commuters from the suburbs. You can't go on about middle class people the way you do and ignore the fact that those are the people the M8 benefits while Glaswegians suffer the effects of it daily.

Am totally ready to turn the M8 into a tree lined public playpark.

The problem is the transport alternatives are nowhere near ready and so it is a very dangerous thing to do in terms of the local economy, jobs, way of life in a city where car bound developments till being built at the periphery and the main game in town is still transport driven mass consumerism.

Where is the free to use, good quality, interconnected mass transit that would easily solve all these problems and more than pay for itself within a few years?

So what worked in Manhattan -- expensive and dangerous bike lanes?

What effect does the M8 have on Glasgow -- my thoughts are that it takes a huge amount of traffic away from local roads and provides an important link between the economies to the east and west of Glasgow region.

Huge plus for the city that Transport 1400 don't understand and cannot comprehend.

Downgrading the M8 will be an act of self harm that will set us back decades.

#21

The politics of free mince loom large in your viewpoint -- free to use public transport services that will need a huge amount of investment to deliver.

Couple of flies in that ointment to say the least.

Utopian hobby horsing mixed in with student politics dreaming that will diminish efforts to bring about meaningful public transport improvements.

What worked in Manhattan was a demonstration that removing a hugely busy urban highway had absolutely no adverse impact on surrounding local roads. It goes to prove that even in the busiest of places reducing demand does not create additional traffic burden.
Behavious change and reduced demand works. This is an argument entirely removed from anything to do with cycle lanes.

The connectivity between the East and West of Glasgow can freely happen via the M74. An urban boulevard in place of the M8 would still have connectivity - just in a more friendly way to the city. Nobody is taking the cars away by removing a motorway. It is not utopian. Urban highways are being removed all over the world and the economic benefits are clear to see. Increased street frontages. Increased urban denisty. Increased attractiveness for new homes and businesses.

We do not need that motorway and any argument to retain it is pure utopian hobby horsing. Middle class welfare keeping that motorway.

#24

If you are talking about the West Side Elevated Highway then you are having a giraffe -- built badly and cheaply in the 1920's with the functionality of a Scalectrix set in a world of steamships and shore porters.

It wasn't removed -- it fell down of its own volition.

Its removal had the same impact as the pedestrianisation of Argyle Street -- please don't tell me you are an academic in this field?

Transport 1400 really need to up their game.

It's great that the FAT BOT hackneyed old mantras just stay true if you keep repeating them enough:

No money for anything and fully funded public transport is NEVER possible etc etc as we don't have any spare money. except for Trident (£200 billion +) or failed corona shut downs (£400 billion + and counting).

The benefits on this one would be off the scale at all sides, environment, community, economy, jobs, business, quality of life etc etc.

So far it's been all stick and no carrot and this would prove the neigh-sayers spectacularly wrong although it may already be too late...

I don't see the problem with dedicated bike lanes.

I cycle to work in the city centre every day regardless of the weather. Somedays I get wet (majority of days I don't) but it is still by far the quickest and most autonomous means of getting around. Segregation from motorised vehicles sounds great.

The initial cost of the bicycle has been recouped by the money saved on public transportation, not to mention you don't need to spend your commute in the close proximity of strangers. Also it is a daily dose of cardio that doesn't need to be spent in a gym.

I would highly recommend it.