A bridge of size: 50 years on, experts reveal how landmark crossing has transformed Scotland’s biggest city

It was to be a bridge to the future, a huge motorway driven through the centre of Scotland’s biggest city, up into the air and across its famous river.

And, in the 50 years since the Kingston Bridge was officially opened, it has become a Glasgow landmark, part of the daily routines of thousands of drivers streaming across the Clyde.

The Queen Mother cut the ribbon to open the 52,000-tonne structure on June 26, 1970, to open a crossing that was to become one of the busiest stretches of motorway in Europe.

Although coronavirus lockdown restrictions mean there will be no official ceremony to mark the occasion, there will be online events to celebrate the bridge, which has not only helped inspire similar networks around the world, but has also undergone record-breaking refurbishment work.

Stuart Baird, bridge manager with Transport Scotland and chairperson of the Glasgow Motorways Archive, believes the bridge deserves to be hailed as much as the more celebrated crossings across the Forth. “Kingston transformed its city,” he said. “It vastly improved journey times and eased horrendous congestion in Glasgow city centre.

“All the roads coming into Glasgow at the time converged in the city centre. You had a lot of traffic coming through and the safety record was poor, and it was difficult to cross roads safely. In terms of what the bridge brought to the city, I’d say it deserves much more love.

“The refurbishment and the fact it’s a concrete structure mean it will last probably well into the next century. Whether it’ll still be taking cars every day remains to be seen, but the structure is definitely a fixture in the city for a long time to come yet.”

The bridge was a vital part of a huge scheme to transform the way increasing motor traffic circulated around Scotland’s biggest city.

Following the Second World War, the authorities devised a master plan to take the transport network forward. City engineer Robert Bruce put together a wide-ranging report, which included bold ideas such as the Clyde Tunnel and a Glasgow Inner Ring Road – a motorway circling the city centre.

In 1961, Detroit, in the US state of Michigan, was among the cities scouted by officials from Glasgow Corporation and the Scotland Office to see how public

Vehicles cross the Kingston Bridge at sunset, main, and its construction, below transport and road systems were implemented on a large scale.

“In Glasgow, from the outset they weren’t just looking at roads, they were also looking at upgrading the underground, the bus network, and taking trams away,” explained Stuart.

“To an extent, American practice influenced the decision-making over here. They knew they wanted a new road network but didn’t want it on the scale of what they were seeing in the big American cities.”

Construction work on the bridge began on May

15, 1967. At the time, the whole project was the most expensive highway scheme ever undertaken in Scotland’s biggest city, with the bridge alone costing about £11 million – the equivalent of £200m today.

The bridge is made of two parallel structures, joined

Aerial view of the Clyde crossing today, below, and in 1970, inset with three sections in-between to hold it together. “The scale of it was huge, a massive project,” Stuart explained.

With five lanes in each direction, it is one of the busiest motorway stretches in Europe.

Projections by the original designers of 120,000 vehicles using the bridge per day in 1990 made were accurate. And at its peak – before the opening of the M74 extension in June 2011 – the Kingston Bridge was taking between 165,000 and 180,000 vehicles a day.

A bridge that takes so many vehicles has very specific maintenance requirements, such as keeping drains clear, signs clean and barriers in place. Serious defects were discovered in the late 1980s and there were fears in the ’90s that it might collapse if strengthening work was not undertaken. Refurbishment involved the substantial task of a phased lifting of the structure, shifting the bridge two inches on to new bearings, work that qualified for the Guinness Book of Records for the world’s biggest ever bridge lift.

Stuart said: “When more work is completed in 2021, that will conclude a major project that has been under way for a number of years.

“The spend on that will probably have been over £50m in the last 25 years.”

Did you work on the bridge? The Glasgow Motorways Archive is looking to collect stories. Visit glasgows-motorways.org.uk