By Bruce Morrison
The Kingston Bridge, which carries the M8 motorway across the river Clyde and into Glasgow’s city centre, has recently turned 50 years old. To mark this anniversary, Transport Scotland has applied to award the bridge ‘Category B’ listed status. This would give the bridge both legal protection and official recognition as an important historic structure. Buildings or structures that are listed cannot be demolished or significantly changed without a lengthy process that involves the local authority, Historic Environment Scotland (HES), and Scottish Government ministers, who have the power to directly intervene in certain cases. The Kingston Bridge does not deserve such recognition and protection, as its construction and continued use has contributed great harm to Glasgow.
The most obvious type of harm is environmental. As one of the busiest motorway bridges in Europe, it carries around 155,000 vehicles per day. This number was recently used by the Transport Secretary, Michael Matheson, to emphasise the bridge’s ‘vital’ importance, however Glasgow City Council has identified road traffic as the main cause of air pollution in the city centre. The council has acknowledged the health risks caused by nitrogen dioxide and other air pollutants and has created a ‘Low-Emissions Zone’ (LEZ) in the city centre to try and address the issue. The problem with the LEZ is that the M8 sits just outside its border on the north and west side, and the Kingston Bridge in the south-west corner, so any attempts to reduce nitrogen dioxide levels in the city centre would likely be compromised if traffic on the motorway remains the same. Bizarrely, Matheson praised the bridge for alleviating traffic in the city centre and allowing for the pedestrianisation of Buchanan Street, and parts of Argyle and Sauchiehall Street. Leaving aside the fact that the city centre retains numerous well-used multi-storey car parks, Matheson’s comment is nonsensical. He argues that the creation of the bridge is good, simply because it has moved traffic from one part of the city centre to another. But what has been achieved beyond that? Given the fact that the bridge has ten lanes, and Matheson already told us the number of vehicles that use it, it’s clear that it’s not helping to reduce air pollution. An article in the Glasgow Times has pointed out that Glasgow consistently has lower rates of car ownership from the rest of Scotland over the past forty years. Just over half our city’s households don’t have access to a car, yet we must live with an enormous motorway and air pollution rates that are some of the worst in Scotland. The Scottish Government declared a ‘climate emergency’ last year, but Matheson’s appraisal of the bridge shows that he is not taking that emergency seriously. He did not once mention global warming, the environment or air quality in his statement.
Praise for the bridge has not just come from Matheson, however. HES has joined the Transport Secretary in ‘celebrating’ its anniversary, with the utterly tone-deaf headline: ‘Kingston Bridge - Half a hunner, still a stunner!’ You would have thought they would be carefully and impartially considering the implications of listing the bridge, but it appears they have already made up their mind. They don’t seem to mind that air pollution damages the historic buildings they’re responsible for, like Glasgow Cathedral, which had pollution crusts removed from its exterior during renovation works in 2013. Perhaps they have just chosen to celebrate the bridge purely because it is historically significant. However, the bridge’s legacy is in fact one of historical destruction. Townhead, Charing Cross, Anderston, Kingston, and Kinning Park are the main areas that have been totally transformed, or virtually disappeared, because of the M8. Despite once being vibrant communities in the heart of Glasgow, many of these areas struggled with poverty and deprivation. Lots of the housing was considered ‘slums’, so it was easy to mark them out for demolition and clear a path for the new motorway. The Kingston Bridge, of course, was needed to connect the destruction both north and south of the Clyde. Where Anderston Cross once stood, there is now only a small train station hidden under the motorway, and a tangle of pedestrian and road bridges that form the junction between the M8 and the Clydeside Expressway.
Walking north, up to Charing Cross, the grandeur of the Mitchell Library stands juxtaposed against the great chasm of the motorway, but other great historic buildings, like the Grand Hotel, did not survive. Stuart Baird, the administrator of the ‘Glasgow’s Motorways’ website, has dismissed claims about the M8’s path of destruction, arguing that ‘95% of poorer housing had been earmarked for demolition’ and consequently ‘districts such as Townhead and Anderston, where the motorway now runs through, would have largely disappeared anyway’. However, what Baird has overlooked is that there were hundreds of people that lived in these areas, and the motorway’s construction permanently displaced them. The statistic about slums is also rather dubious, given that photographic evidence of Anderston Cross from as late as 1967 shows robust tenement buildings, as well as various shops and amenities.
South of the river, in Kingston, maps from the late 19th and early 20th centuries shows wide, tree-lined streets. Comments from several members of the Hidden Glasgow forum suggest that despite poverty and problems with overcrowding, the area still had a strong sense of community, some beautiful architecture, green spaces and the potential for rejuvenation. One older member of the forum, whose family had to move because of the bridge’s construction, fondly recalled a café that was popular with the community. Whilst I am not denying that the demolition of unsafe housing may have sometimes been necessary, that doesn’t mean regeneration was impossible. I would be interested to see Stuart Baird explaining to the members of these displaced communities how exactly the Kingston Bridge, and the M8, has benefitted them. Even Baird must be aware that the M8’s construction can be traced to the ‘Bruce Report’ from 1948, which proposed destroying the city centre, and rebuilding it as a modern, car-centric utopia. The report contained similar ideas to those of Patrick Abercrombie, who had ambitious designs for London that were partially realised, and a mothballed plan for a motorway through the middle of Edinburgh. Whilst Bruce and Abercrombie’s visions never fully manifested, their shared belief in the importance of the private car was part of an ideology that lasted for decades, becoming inextricably linked with Thatcherite individualism in the eighties. These ideas have since proven unpopular and sustainable, as the harm caused by motorways has never been more apparent. In central Glasgow, even fifty years after the bridge’s construction, the prospect of regeneration seems very unlikely. Dozens of hectares of waste-ground surround the motorway on both sides of the river, and the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation shows a clear pattern of deprived areas along the side of the motorway, from Cowcaddens in the north to Kinning Park in the south.
The M8 has also exacerbated divides between wealthy areas and poor areas – for instance, wealthy Pollokshields West (blue and white) is largely cut off from deprived Kingston West and Dumbreck (red).
The Kingston Bridge is thus a monument to failure – it is part of a system of transport, and an ideology, that has failed the environment, failed poor and vulnerable Glaswegians, and many historic buildings and districts were pulled down to make way for its construction. Its destructive force outweighs its historic value, which is why HES should not grant it listed status. Instead of protecting such a terrible structure, our government bodies ought to be concerned with public and active transport, community regeneration, and the preservation of history. HES have invited the public to give their views on the listing of the bridge, and I encourage everyone to tell them what they think, especially if you live in or around Glasgow. The consultation can be found here: https://consultations.historicenvironment.scot/heritage/designating-kingston-bridge-glasgow/ Emailing them only takes a few minutes, and the consultation closes on the 17th of July, so there is only a few more days to have your voice heard!
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