How Spider-Man made me late for work in Glasgow

The Herald Scotland

a day ago

The Marvel (or, um, Sony) production took over the streets on July 31, and it has since been revealed that the shoot has been extended. Previously due to wrap up on August 15, Glasgow will now keep its Big Apple costume on until August 26. Bothwell Street, Blythswood Street, and West Campbell Street are among the roads closed for Spider-Man 4, or Spiderman: Brand New Day. Further filming is set to take place around the Merchant City area, with road restrictions in place there as well.
'It's the first time you can say Spiderman made you late for work,' one of my colleagues joked. But it's true. Quite a few stragglers have grumbled about the traffic, the endless tailbacks and rerouted buses. As if driving into Glasgow city centre could get any worse. Nearly a month of disruption! The chaos!
If you are stuck in your car, crawling along Ingram Street on your way into the office this month, something to consider is why you are even driving into the city centre to begin with. The 11-day shoot extension is a great opportunity to think about where your nearest park and ride is. You could spend the weekend dusting the cobwebs off your old bicycle and zip into town on one of the new cycle lanes.
Not everyone can ditch their car. Some people require them for accessibility reasons; others require them specifically for work. But if you do not actually need to drive into the city centre, you shouldn't. Every driver is someone else's delay.
The plethora of road closures is as good an excuse as any to kick-start a habit shift. Now is also a great time to remind you that ScotRail will be dropping its deranged and asinine peak fares on September 1 so it might finally be cheaper to take public transport than drive (I can't speak for the buses).
Those people who kiss their cars goodnight bemoan the council's car-free agenda. But it is a bit rich. The city centre is still completely dominated by cars. There is only around 700m of pedestrianised space in Glasgow City Centre (Buchanan Street, Sauchiehall Street, Argyle Street, Royal Exchange and St Enoch Square). Compare this with your average European city, where people-friendly space usually ranges from more than a kilometre to multiple hectares, and it's hard to argue that Glasgow hates cars.
Fans watching Spider-Man 4 filming. (Image: Colin Mearns)
The Spider-Man set makes clear that Glasgow really does look a lot like New York. Glasgow was one of the first cities to have a gridiron street plan, which partially inspired New York's layout. But Glasgow's streets have long stopped being a model for anyone to mimic. The Avenues Programme and the City Centre Transformation Plan (2022-32) are ambitious and forward-thinking, but the planet will already have gone up in flames before either is realised. The rollout of the Avenues Programme is sluggish. Movement seems to inch along slower than the traffic at St Vincent Street these past few weeks. Whether by design or by default, the paperwork always seems to take priority over shovel-in-the-ground progress. I sometimes wonder how many trees are sacrificed for all of these consultations.
Across the pond in the real New York City, they just get on with it. They have a more do first, refine later approach, which means urban improvements don't drag on for years. They start with the quickest things to implement, like the paint and the planters, restricting the traffic swiftly to mimic what the end result will be. It means people can shift their routes and get used to the new layout. Meanwhile in Glasgow, planters sit empty for years and building sites lie untouched and collecting rubbish for reasons not communicated to the public.
Part of the reason New York is good at cracking on is because the city has the public imagination for more people-friendly spaces. There is a strong anti-pedestrianisation lobby in Glasgow, it seems, and infrastructure changes that prioritise active travel are typically hit with resistance from both businesses and residents. In New York (as well as in many European cities), people just expect city centre areas to be pedestrianised.
Our city centre has come a long way over the last few years, and there are ambitious plans to return large swathes of the city back to the people. The controversial Low Emission Zone has significantly improved air quality, the cycle lanes are starting to come together, and it is getting easier to see the elaborate vision of The Avenues project. But maybe we should take a lesson from New York and just implement whatever the final traffic routes will be now. In New York, they just used lawn chairs.
It is amazing what Hollywood can do for the imagination. Spider-Man turning Glasgow into New York for a few weeks makes it easy to see the city in a new light and envision its potential as a prospering metropolis that is actually enjoyable to spend time in. We just need to get the planters and the paint out while searching for the shovels in the shed. Spider-Man deserves a friendly neighbourhood to prance around in.
Marissa MacWhirter is a columnist and feature writer at The Herald, and the editor of The Glasgow Wrap. The newsletter is curated between 5-7am each morning, bringing the best of local news to your inbox each morning without ads, clickbait, or hyperbole. Oh, and it's free. She can be found on X @marissaamayy1