M8 motorway
Encyclopedia : M : M8 : M8M : M8 motorway
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| M8 motorway | |
| Length | 60.3 miles 97.0 km |
| Direction | East - West |
| Start | Edinburgh City Bypass |
| Primary destinations | Glasgow Paisley Erskine Bridge |
| End | Greenock |
| Construction dates | 1965 - 1995 |
| Motorways joined | 2 -  M9 motorway 8 -  M73 motorway 13 -  M80 motorway 22 -  M77 motorway 30 -  M898 motorway |
Glasgow's urban motorway, the M8 is the busiest motorway in Scotland. An east-west artery it connects Edinburgh west to Glasgow and ends at the Firth of Clyde.
Layout
The M8 runs west from the west side of Edinburgh, where it interconnects with the Edinburgh City Bypass. It connects with the M9 a few miles west of the city, before passing Livingston, and Bathgate, but reverts to the A8 at the junction with the A73 before passing Airdrie, and Coatbridge then reverting to the M8 again at Baillieston Interchange in the East End of Glasgow where it meets the M73 (which joins the M74 roughly three km (two miles) to the south. It then heads westward through the eastern suburbs of Glasgow before turning south and crossing the River Clyde on the Kingston Bridge, one of the busiest motorway river crossings in Europe.South of the river the M8 intersects with the M77 and continues west, passing Renfrew, Paisley and Glasgow Airport terminating at West Ferry to the east of Langbank at the junction with the A8 Greenock Road across the Clyde from Dumbarton.
The M8 was largely completed by 1970. Together with the as-yet unbuilt extension to the M74, the M8 forms two sides of an uncompleted ring road around Glasgow city centre. The northern extension of the M74 to just south of the Kingston Bridge should alleviate some of the congestion problems, but this is not planned to be completed until 2008.
Glasgow City Council have recently published plans to complete the eastern flank of the ring road, which will leave the new section of the M74 at Polmadie, cutting northwards through Parkhead, and Carntyne, connecting with the M8 at Junction 13 (Provan Gas Works/Plantation). It is unclear at this stage whether this will be a motorway standard road, or if indeed the proposal will get the go-ahead given the already fierce opposition to the M74 extension.
The M8 closely parallels, and in part replaces, the A8 road. The section from Easterhouse to Townhead mainly used the route of the abandoned Monkland Canal. The M8 is broken at one point, at the eastern edge of Glasgow between Junction 8 Baillieston and Junction 6 Newhouse, where it reverts to the being the A8 for 10 km (6 miles). An upgrade programme instigated in late 2002 improved the quality of this section of road greatly, but it remained an A-classified dual carriageway.
The task of upgrading this section to motorway standard has long been a thorny issue for the Scottish Executive, but on 20th December 2005 they finally announced proposals for the ["missing link" to be filled in], with the upgrade to full motorway standard between Baillieston and Newhouse being completed by 2011. This will be started, pending a public enquiry, in 2007, and will see several new junctions being built at Chapelhall (Jct. 6B?) and Bargeddie (Jct. 8A?). An entirely new section of motorway is also to be built between Eurocentral and Bargeddie, which will be to the south of the existing A8, and will see the construction of a large new free flowing junction at Shawhead (Jct. 7?), where the M8 will meet the A725. The existing A8 at this section will be downgraded to a single carriageway feeder road for the many farms that currently feed onto it, as well as the road to Carnbroe, which will not be connected to the new motorway. The new motorway is planned to be of the three lane type, until the new junction which will replace the existing Eurocentral junction on the A8. Between Eurocentral and the existing Newhouse junction (Jct. 6) with the A73 the new motorway is planned to be of the two lane type with a parallel dual carriageway that will allow access to the existing Chapelhall Junction and also eastbound exit and westbound access to/from the Newhouse Junction, where a lot of existing traffic leaves the motorway, which will also see major junction improvements to its heavily congested and poorly laid out two roundabouts and dual carriageway leading to a dangerous fork in the road.
Regarded as one of the most complex motorways in the UK, rivalled only by London's infamous M25, the Central Glasgow section of the M8 is notorious for bottlenecks and delays between the M8's eastern and western sections. This is largely due to the closely spaced junctions, and the fact that both the M73 and M80 from the south and north east dump all their traffic onto a 5-lane stretch that in the space of a 3 km (2 miles) reduces to only 2 lanes as the M8 blasts a path through the city centre.
In 2004 it was announced that a section of the M8 was the 2nd busiest stretch of road in the entire UK, after a section of the M60 motorway (usually a section of the M25 motorway holds the honour of the busiest, but had unusually low traffic figures in 2004 due to roadworks). An average of 173,000 vehicles per day used that stretch of the M8 in 2004.
Trivia
- The Central Glasgow section of the M8 was the one of the first motorways in the UK to feature the advanced CITRAC (Centrally Integrated TRAffic Control) system. A network of CCTV cameras around the motorway and its primary feeder routes is linked to a central Police control room, who can use it to identify problems and activate the system of overhead lane signals above the motorway. It is linked to the NADICS system.
- Several redundant bridges were built over the city centre section of the M8, but were never put to use. The infamous "Bridge to Nowhere" (in the Charing Cross district) was intended to be the platform for a restaurant which would look down onto the motorway. It never materialised. In 1990, an office block was eventually built atop the bridge.
- Despite the fact that the Inner Ring Road project was never completed, signs on the city centre stretches of the M8 and its feeder roads still carried the words "Ring Road" until the late 1980s before they were finally removed.
- A dead-end flyover was built onto the end of the Kingston Bridge in anticipation of the M74 extension. 34 years on, it still waits for the elusive motorway connection to be built. The current proposals for the M74 completion will not use this exit, leaving it redundant.
- The perfectly straight section of motorway between Junctions 26 and 27 in Renfrewshire was originally the runway of the former Renfrew Airport, which closed in 1966, following the opening of Glasgow International Airport a few miles further west. Hillington Industrial Estate, which looks on to this section of the M8 and (until its recent move to Inchinnan) included the Rolls-Royce plant, which originally started as a World War II Shadow Factory.
- A picture of the M8 is featured on Glasgow band Deacon Blue's 1987 album "Raintown", where a night-time long-exposure image of the northern approach to the Kingston Bridge taken from the aforementioned "Bridge to Nowhere" appears on the back cover of the album.
- In the aftermath of the M8's completion, the UK Government declared that it would be the last motorway to be built through a UK city.
- The city centre stretch features a few quirky junctions where traffic enters and exits the motorway using the right-hand, outside lane. This stretch is also subject to a 50mph speed restriction.
Key M8 milestones
- 1965 The first section of the M8, the Harthill bypass, is opened
- 1970 Central Glasgow section completed
- 1980 Glasgow Inner Ring Road project officially abandoned
- 1990 Kingston Bridge found to be deteriorating, signalling major repair work
- 1991 M8 extended to Hermiston Gait, Edinburgh city bypass
- 1992 Plantation off-ramp demolished to be replaced by M80 Stepps by-pass
- 1993 St. James' Interchange near Paisley and Linwood opens
- 2003 A8 between Baillieston and Newhouse upgraded to almost-motorway standard
Exit list
See also
External links
- [CBRD Motorway Database - M8]
- [Traffic Scotland - Real Time and Future Traffic Information for Scotland (formerly NADICS)]
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