M8 Kingston Bridge, Glasgow
Completed in June 1970, the Kingston Bridge carrying the M8 across the Clyde became the lynchpin of the Glasgow Motorway Network which remains the most ambitious of any British city
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M8 Motorway
Kingston Bridge
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The Kingston Bridge carryies the M8 across the Clyde, lynchpin of the Glasgow Motorway Network, scenes of whose construction are documented in the newly-expanded Glasgow Motorway Archive. These roads give Glasgow a more North American character than any other British city, and while parts of its postwar vision were never fulfilled as priority was switched to public transport projects including the Argyle Line, Subway modernisation and the Fastlink bus lanes, enough was built including 40 years later the M74 Northern Extension to deliver a US sense of scale and mobility.
The M8 decluttered and at least for a time decongested Glasgow, with multi-storey park-and-ride provision and the city-centre section built in a cutting to offset the severance inflicted elsewhere. All this was before the arrival of modern concerns about air quality, climate change and inclusion that can perhaps best be addressed by retrofitting the network for electric vehicles, bus priority and active travel.
On the M8 as it crosses the River Clyde
Photo credit: CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=240730