Glasgow should close the Clyde Tunnel - here's why
READ MORE: Clyde Tunnel could be forced to close as staff vote on strike action
Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, staff members monitor the crucial underwater stretch of road between Whiteinch and Govan. They keep the motorists safe, watching the CCTV for incidents and responding to them, managing the air quality, and performing maintenance tasks. They even control traffic signals!
This week, the union representing the workers announced they were considering going on strike. They rejected a pay offer from Glasgow City Council and are now voting on industrial action. If they go ahead with it, the crucial artery could close, sending thousands of commuters into a flurry of chaos.
More than 65,000 vehicles pass through the Clyde Tunnel each day. That's five times the amount of traffic it was built to take. It is undeniably a crucial piece of national infrastructure, and it is vital to the West of Scotland, especially due to its proximity to the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital. When I heard that it could close (albeit temporarily), I thought, good. We should close it.
Glasgow City Council is in pretty dire financial straits. As much as I agree that the workers should be offered a pay rise in line with inflation, I can understand the council saying that a 3% offer was the 'best possible' with the funding they have available. The thing is, they would have more funding available if they weren't footing the bill for one of the country's most important roads. So, let's close it.
READ MORE MARISSA MACWHIRTER
The Clyde Tunnel links to major motorways and is clearly not just any old stretch of asphalt. Yet rather than being treated as a trunk road like the M8 or the M80, Glasgow City Council gets the same amount of funding per kilometre for the tunnel from the national settlement as per a standard stretch of road. In other words, it gets the same amount of cash as say, a town high street in Dumfries and Galloway. It leads to an annual shortfall of £860,000, swallowing up nearly 10 per cent of the authority's entire road maintenance budget. The tunnel is only around 2,500 feet long. Imagine how many potholes we could fill around the city if the council could shake this white elephant off of its back? Close to 4,000, actually. Or resurface around 4.5km of normal, single-carriageway roads.
The council is also expected to fund consistent repairs needed to keep it functioning. They need an investment of around £16 million for operational infrastructure and structural issues. The kind of fixes that get more and more expensive the further you delay them.
I say we close it in protest until the Scottish Government agrees to fund it as a trunk road. Vehicles from all over the West Coast use the Clyde Tunnel without stopping in Glasgow. Imagine the bedlam if they were forced to reroute to the Kingston Bridge? It would not be able to cope with the swarm of angry lorry drivers beep beep-beeping through the agonising gridlock. Efficiency is money, and clogging up traffic across the west of Scotland might knock some sense into the Transport Secretary. It literally joins up the A739 (a trunk road). The council should not be paying for Scotland's only road tunnel.
The alternative solution that the local authority has floated is to make the people who don't pay for council tax in Glasgow pay to use our tunnel. A tunnel toll is currently being investigated by the council (although they don't have the powers to implement it). The idea is that fancy cameras would scan registration plates and those without a G postcode would be sent a bill. Non-Glasgow residents cried that this was 'unfair'. Some branded it a 'tax' on hospital-goers. But I think it's unfair that people living in Glasgow should be left holding the bag. And hey, if they don't want to pay the toll, those motorists can use one of Transport Scotland's Clyde crossings.
Another option is that the Scottish Government rethinks how its road budget is divvied up. A common-sense approach would be to fund roads by vehicle usage instead of length. The only hiccup there is that our country's approach to road infrastructure is illogical at best. Look at the absolute shambles of their attempt at dualling the A9 from Perth to Inverness. It will be more than a decade overdue, and the cost has ballooned to around £3.7 billion. That could fund the Clyde Tunnel for around 4,300 years.
Now I understand that the folk who do not live in Glasgow can get a bit touchy about paying to use the tunnel, but you can hardly blame the authority for exploring its options. I agree with City Treasurer Ricky Bell's description of the current set-up. It is truly 'bizarre'. The cost of keeping the Clyde Tunnel open is fixed. A lot could go wrong with a 62-year-old tunnel beneath a river, so no matter what, its maintenance comes first when the council is slicing up its roads budget. And a critical part of keeping the tunnel safe is the team of staff members who watch over it at all hours of the day. They deserve to be paid accordingly for their work.
Next week, we will find out if the strike is on and the tunnel is closed. I naturally have a little taste for chaos – I'm curious to see what would happen if this genuinely came to fruition. And whether the ensuing traffic meltdown would finally make the Scottish Government realise they should be paying for the Clyde Tunnel.
Marissa MacWhirter is the editor of The Glasgow Wrap. Each morning, Marissa curates the top local news stories from around the city, delivering them to your inbox at 7am daily so you can stay up to date on the best reporting without ads, clickbait or annoying digital clutter. Oh, and it's free. She can be found on X @marissaamayy1
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