GLASGOW Chamber of Commerce has called on Transport Scotland to publish the completed technical modelling on the M8 Woodside Viaducts and test all three options before a final decision is made.
The Viaducts, built in 1971 between Craighall and Charing Cross, carry around 150,000 vehicles a day and have been propped up since March 2021 at a cost of more than £150 million in temporary repairs. Transport Scotland has consulted on three approaches – repair, replace, or remove.
The chamber’s council of directors has examined the evidence published thus far and identified ‘significant gaps’. It added that information released by the Scottish Government under environmental information regulations on April 30 confirmed that the traffic modelling behind the consultation tested the removal option as a straight closure, with no compensating public transport and no local network upgrades assumed. It also confirmed that no completed technical report on that modelling exists.
The M8/M74 corridor connects Glasgow’s manufacturing base, more than 3,000 firms, and 55,000 jobs, to Glasgow Airport, Greenock Ocean Terminal, and the Glasgow-Edinburgh corridor. Scotland moves around 148 million tonnes of freight by road each year, the bulk of it on the M8/M74, the chamber explained.
The council of directors has agreed ten questions it says must be answered before the chamber can take a final position, including the capacity of the M74 to absorb displaced traffic, the impact on the neighbouring Kingston Bridge, and the long-term plan for the full M8 corridor.
Stuart Patrick, CEO of Glasgow Chamber of Commerce, said, “This is one of the most consequential infrastructure decisions Glasgow will face in a generation, and it shouldn’t be made on incomplete evidence. The modelling behind this consultation didn’t even test what removal plus investment in an alternative would look like.
“Before Glasgow cuts one of its main arteries, we need the completed technical work, all three options properly modelled, and the industrial case weighed as heavily as the regeneration case. Get this right and Glasgow gains, but if we get it wrong, it’s very hard to undo.”
The chamber has not endorsed any of the three options and says its priority is that Transport Scotland completes and publishes the outstanding analysis before proceeding.
