IT’S 27 years exactly since I moved to Glasgow from Northern Ireland. I fell in love with the city, hard and fast. I’d never felt more at home in my life. I was young and the city was rambunctious and real, it had an edge to it: wicked, fizzing, rebellious humour; a screw-you sense of honesty.
Before advertising hijacked the word ‘authenticity’ to sell us lies, Glasgow was authentic. I wasn’t blinded by love, I could see the poverty, the ugliness, but the way Glasgow wore its scars openly, confronted its own darkness, made me love it all the more. The city was brave. It didn’t pretend to be something it wasn’t. If Glasgow was a guy, I’d want to be his best friend; if Glasgow was a woman, I’d want to marry her.
Over the years, my love hasn’t died. But lasting love means seeing your lover honestly. The one truth Glasgow can’t admit is that it’s never lived up to its potential. As a lover, that makes me pretty sad. Glasgow is like that brilliant person you knew at university: the funniest, brightest, sexiest candle burning in a room of half-lights, who could have won a Nobel, become PM, but instead sat on their laurels and settled.
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There’s a wee symbol for me of Glasgow’s abandoned potential – I say ‘abandoned’ as Glasgow isn’t a human, it won’t age and die; there’s always time to grab the future by the throat. That symbol is the city’s subway – the underground railway, known with wonderful Glasgow sketchiness as The Clockwork Orange.
When I rocked up here in summer 1995, my newfound friends took me on the infamous Sub Crawl: you catch the tube and get off at every stop for a drink in a pub. You’re legless when it’s over. But then it was the 1990s – the lovely, decadent old 90s. When I jumped the first train, I was confused. I looked at the underground map – a tight swooping noose thrown around the neck of the city – and thought, ‘this can’t be it?’. One line?
Wasn’t Glasgow the second city of the empire and all that jazz? Why had this wild, fun, good-time city just settled for this? Surely a great city merits a great metro?
Over the years, I’ve explored some of the world’s greatest cities – though, still cities without the heart and soul of the Glasgow I love – riding subways from New York to Moscow and wondered to myself, ‘why the hell don’t we have this?’.
Why have we one puny line, when we could have connected every neighbourhood? Connection means trade: more money, better jobs, more secure employment. Connection means happier citizens, cleaner roads, safer streets, more vibrant night life (though you’d be hard pushed to improve a Friday night in Glasgow to be fair). Big cities deserve big, bustling transport systems. No?
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This niggled away at me for years, frustrating me that my lover is content to have this shabby side, that could, so easily, have been addressed over the decades. If it’s good enough for Lisbon, Milan, Stockholm and Athens, why not Glasgow?
Then this Monday, news arrived that Edinburgh is to extend its tram system at the cost of £1billion, creating a north-south line through the city. Now, I know the first tram project was bonkers, but that doesn’t mean trams are bonkers. Trams are good. Don’t blame trams for the idiots who mismanaged the initial project. So well done Edinburgh. Good on you for your ambition. Be proud of yourself for not settling.
Glasgow’s underground holds the rather embarrassing title of being the only metro system on Earth to never have expanded since it first opened in 1896. Yet over the last 126 years there’s been six major studies done to build it bigger and better, connecting the whole city in effect. There were plans to extend the subway in 1937, 1944, 1948, 1954, 1988 and 2010. None – clearly – ever got off the drawing board.
Why? You know the slogan – ‘People Make Glasgow’ – well, that’s true, but it’s clearly politicians who fail Glaswegians. It’s not the people’s fault the subway hasn’t changed since Victoria was an empress. It’s the fault of those ‘City Fathers’, and now ‘Mothers’ and their masters in central government in London, and now Edinburgh.
Yes, there’s difficulties extending the Glasgow system, not least because we’ve got stupidly small tunnels, and so a different track gauge, to the rest of the UK. But humanity sent some folk to the moon, found a vaccine for Covid, so I’m sure we can sort out the size of Glasgow’s teeny tracks.
There’s cost, clearly. We’re about to enter a financial Ice Age so I’m not saying let’s blow public money which could, quite literally, save lives on a fancy-schmantzy metro. But I am asking: why was this never done in the good times, why did no politician ever care enough about the city which gave them a good living to make Glasgow better, to help Glasgow fulfil its potential?
You could argue, though, that as economic horror races over the horizon like a monster from a 1950s B Movie, perhaps some job creation might be good. All those construction jobs, and construction workers needing lunches and pints after work – the trickle down might be mighty.
Still, that’s not the argument. The argument is about the way this beautiful, mad city I love has been allowed to stagnate by those in power. When it comes to the logistics of this city, Glaswegians don’t seem to matter. A monstrous motorway cuts through Glasgow’s heart, our peripheral neighbourhoods just rot. Each new council administration arrives with wondrous schemes of transformation: they’ll make the Clyde another Thames; they’ll green Glasgow’s heart; they’ll turn us into the next Paris.
After 27 years here, all this adopted Glaswegian has seen is failure, decline, and politicians who say one thing, do the other, take the money and run. The Clockwork Orange is a symbol of that mismanagement. Politicians are custodians of a city we all love. They’ve let a jewel tarnish. Hell mend them for that failure. Glasgow deserves miles better than it’s ever received.
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