David Leask: Why Glasgow's subway woes mirror those of Sydney

Travel vloggers, in particular, cannot get enough of the visually striking Swiss-made replacements for the Metro-Cammel carriages of the very 1980s Clockwork Orange.

“It is like an alien coming out of a tunnel,” declared Youtubers JJ Extra of the new vehicles in a video already viewed more than 100,000 times. “It is so futuristic.” 

“It is like an alien coming out of a tunnel,” declared Youtubers (Image: Colin Mearns)

That same word was used by Edificity on the same platform. This urbane video-maker - who likes to cover transport and architecture - told and even bigger audience that that the new vehicles were “great”, even “incredible”.

He added: “The trains are futuristic and yet slightly timeless. At first I was said about relegating the orange to the doors and trims. But actually in the relatively dim stations the white car body really shines.”

That word - ‘futuristic” - was also bandied around this summer about one of the newest Metro lines on the planet, in Sydney, Australia.

In Glasgow it is just the cars that are new, in the New South Wales capital, it is an entire extension. 

Both systems - Scotland’s eventually and Sydney’s already - are designed to do without drivers. 

Reviewers of the Australian line have been every bit as gushing and breathless as those talking about Glasgow’s far dinkier equivalent.

Writing in the Guardian’s down under edition, one writer, Melanie Tait, declared images of the new stations had been “architectural porn”. 

Then she added: “The videos made by trainspotters geeking out at the speed, the lighting and the cleanliness were as exciting as any trailer for a blockbuster movie.” 

Tait, a playwright, had a point. Some of the corridors and deep escalators of the Sydney system do look like a sci-fi set. Whoever makes the next Star Wars movie could save a bob or two by having their space goodies and baddies fight with their electric swords somewhere under New South Wales.

It is not just the patter about space age trains that binds the Scottish and the Australian stories. There is something else too: repeated griping about snagging and costs.

“The trains are futuristic and yet slightly timeless (Image: Colin Mearns)

Coverage of Glasgow’s new trains, for starters, has been strikingly negative in mainstream news outlets. The cars are part of a modernisation programme that came with a price-tag of £288m. 

As so often is the case with big projects, the new trains and the infrastructure improvement they required have not been without glitches.

The modernised vehicles might be described as “space age” but they are initially running more slowly than those of the “steam age”. That should change. 

There have been stories about delays and even breakdowns which forced passengers, including an opposition MSP, to get out and walk along tunnels to escape. Which is either an adventure or terrifying, depending on how much you like dank holes in the ground.

SPT, the quango responsible for the Subway, has admitted the issues. Back in June, its officials filed an official report on the progress of the modernisation programme. 

At the risk of unfairly summing up their view on snags, it went something like “yeah, these things happen”.

“The significant successes of new fleet introduction seen in the last six months have also been accompanied by a level of service disruption which has directly affected our customers,” read the official report. 

"We have seen a rise in complaints and an interest in the overall fleet performance as a result of this disruption. Increased disruption was a known risk, common with all new fleet introductions and which SPT has focussed on.. Our legacy fleet is at end of its life and regularly causes delays and disruption, while our new fleet has also experienced some issues which would reasonably be expected at this stage of operation.”

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There is a whole long backstory to the metro in New South Wales. 

Greater Sydney has roughly as many people as the whole of Scotland - but it was only in the new century that serious consideration was given to an underground transit system to keep them moving. 

Things got serious a decade ago after the New South Wales government privatised its power company to help finance the scheme.

Because this project is expensive; very, very expensive.

Sydney’s entire network - currently one of the biggest rail construction projects in the world - is going to set back the taxpayer 65billion Australian dollars which translates as, well,  a lot more than efforts to replace Glasgow’s old orange trains. 

The latest extension, is costing 21 billion in Aussie money, or £11 billion in British money.  It includes shiny new stations, such as Gadigal near the seat of city government and a new Sydney Central. 

There has been slippage. Last summer a government report said the overall scheme was facing “significant technical and budget risks”. The entire scheme needed a cash injection of more than a billion dollars, it said. There remains uncertainly about the third and final line, to South west Sydney, initially scheduled to be up and running by the end of the decade.

As in Glasgow, the latest extension needed time for engineers to iron out snags and carry out safety checks. 

New South Wales Premier Chris Minns - who is very crudely the equivalent of a Scottish first minister - last month ended up apologising profusely when it emerged that an August 4 launch was not going to be possible.

“It’s a lesson for us about not jumping the gun here and making sure that when we name a date, we’re sure it can go ahead,” he said. 

“I’m really sorry about it.” Officials, he added, wanted to make sure they got everything right. Minns had previously called for an inquiry in to costs and delays.

Some news outlets screamed that it has been obvious for some time that Australia’s rail regulator would not sign off on the new line on time. 

Scroll forward a few days and 7News Australia declared: “It’s finally here.” 

The TV station’s correspondent joined New South Wales’ beaming transport minister, Jo Haylen, on a red-eye commuter service from the suburbs to the central business district. “People are going to love this new service. I think Sydney is going to be wowed.”

She was not alone on her train. A couple of hundred thousand people boarded Metro trains when the latest line opened on August 19. 

Reports and social media posts - unlike so much of the politics in the build-up - were upbeat.  

Commuters were getting home much quicker  - sparking a joke that a suburban husband was caught with his mistress when his wife arrived half an hour earlier than usual. 

Pictured: Glasgow subway carriage stock (Image: Colin Mearns)

There is a pattern in Scotland and New South Wales, of both cynicism and enthusiasm about high-tech developments. 

ABC, the main public TV in Australia, asked a transport expert if he could explain why punters were quite so happy with the new metro. 

Geoffrey Clinton used a word that has been littered through this article. People, he explained, like things that are new and the driverless trains feel like something "that's exciting, that's modern and futuristic”.

Glasgow’s Subway, of course, has never been expanded, despite numerous proposals. Passengers moan about service restrictions and its pace. But the Scottish system is now somehow both old and new, both cute and contemporary. So expect more rave reviews from visitors, if not locals.