In the aftermath of the recent UK general election, I saw the following tweet about a new MP demanding a direct rail link from his constituency to London.
The tweet criticised our collective fixation on direct connections to our destinations, which necessitates massive capacity at a few central hubs. This approach, while seemingly convenient, has led to congested hubs, consequently infrequent services, and an overall inefficient system for those not travelling directly to these key points.
What if instead of focusing on direct connections to a few overburdened hubs, we designed a system that offered more frequent services across the network? In such a system, the need for direct connections would diminish because travellers could easily transfer between services without long waits, allowing for more fluid movement across the network. Additionally, journeys that don’t involve these central hubs would become more accessible, enhancing the overall usefulness of the transport system.
Glasgow’s current rail network exemplifies the limitations of our existing approach. Nearly all rail services in the city funnel into either Central Station or Queen Street Station. With few interchange stations—Partick Station being one of the rare examples with its connection to the Subway—cross-city journeys become disproportionately lengthy and inconvenient. Consider the trip from Coatbridge to Bellshill, a mere 14-minute drive south, yet a rail journey of over an hour via Glasgow’s city centre. This structure is evident from the current Scotrail map of rail services in the Greater Glasgow are:
But this double hub with everything via Central or Queen St is not actually a feature of the actual physical rail network around Glasgow - which is a true network, as depicted in the schematic below. This network has significant untapped potential...
Poor public transport, and in particular, poor suburban rail networks, which lead to disconnected populations and low "effective city size" is a leading proposed cause for the poor economic performance of UK cities outwith London, relative to our European comparators. Tom Forth has extensively discussed the importance of transport connectivity in driving economic improvement. As has the Centre for Cities think tank, which found that, in keeping with the potential of Glasgow's rail network, “all large British cities [outwith London], except Glasgow, have worse public transport accessibility than their European peers”.
While Glasgow’s existing network places it in a relatively strong position compared to other UK cities, it still falls short when compared to its European counterparts. By enhancing connectivity across the network—beyond just the central hubs—Glasgow could significantly increase its effective size, leading to greater economic output and an improved quality of life for its residents, as the city’s population can more easily access its amenities and employment opportunities.
Plans are already in motion to improve Glasgow’s rail network, with a proposed "Clyde Metro". According to Glasgow City Council, the Clyde Metro represents “a multi-billion investment over a 30-year period and could better connect more than 1.5 million people to employment, education, and health services in and around Glasgow” . The Strathclyde Partnership for Transport (SPT) has been tasked with leading this initiative, signalling a significant step towards modernising the region’s transit infrastructure.
The following maps (1) from Glasgow City Council, and (2) from Scottish Government and Transport Scotland’s Strategic Transport Projects Review, offers a broad outline of what the Clyde Metro might look like:
The details on the above maps remain somewhat vague, and the plan highlights some principle objectives for the Clyde Metro (“high-quality public transport links to key hubs (for example city centre, hospitals, major education facilities, key employment centres, retail hubs, and major leisure/sports facilities) and major transport hubs (for example Glasgow Central and Queen Street railway stations, Glasgow Airport, and suburban interchanges), together with unserved or underserved areas”) without specifying how these objectives will be met.
These objectives are important, as illustrated by the following map I created which shades 800m radius circles around the stations on Glasgow's existing network (showing many areas are quite far away from easily accessing the system) and a map created by Tom Forth showing the areas where it’s currently quicker to reach the city centre by car than by public transport.
While the proposed Clyde Metro does look like a step in the right direction (e.g. links would connect to some of those black regions on Tom Forth's map and so provide extra connectivity from these regions to the city centre), they do not address what I believe is the core issue: the need to de-emphasise the centrality of Glasgow’s main stations, Central and Queen Street, in favour of a more distributed network which can be conveniently traversed from any point A to any other point B, without either of these points being the city centre. The real challenge—and opportunity—lies in reconfiguring the network to allow for massively increased service frequency and facilitating journeys across the city, not just to and from the city centre.
In the next two posts I will show my proposals for this: the next post will show how I'd reconfigure the existing network - involving no new lines; and I'll follow this up by showing an expanded network with some new lines in areas of the city I know best.
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