Why is Glasgow City Council footing the bill of Scotland’s only road tunnel?

The Clyde Tunnel costs the council around £820,000 more annually than it’s given – enough to fix an extra 4,000 potholes a year.

Clyde Tunnel, June 1963. Newsquest Archive.

THE countdown begins when the mouth of the Clyde Tunnel comes into view. Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Suck in a belly full of air and hold your breath as the car rattles beneath the river. If you’re lucky and moving through the steep highway tunnel unbothered by traffic, the journey takes a mere 57 seconds at 30mph. As children, it’s a game. As adults, a superstition. Even those who don’t partake still feel a surge of adrenaline at the sight of its entrance.

Each day more than 65,000 vehicles make the subterranean journey beneath the River Clyde. Scotland’s only road tunnel is a crucial artery through the west of the country, linking to the M8 and the Clydeside Expressway and connecting Govan with Whiteinch. But despite its national significance, the maintenance of one of the country’s most ambitious civil engineering projects falls to Glasgow’s cash-strapped council. Like a gift from the King of Siam, the landmark tunnel sucks up far more capital from the council budget than it can spare.

“We get the same amount of money to maintain the Clyde Tunnel as say, the town high street in Dumfries and Galloway does,” says councillor Ruairi Kelly.

The city convenor for neighbourhood services and assets explains the tunnel receives the same amount per kilometre from the national settlement as per a standard stretch of road. Though it links to major motorways, the Clyde Tunnel is not treated as a trunk road like the M8 or the M80. It leads to an annual shortfall of £820,000 which swallows up nearly 10 per cent of the entire road maintenance budget.

“For an infinitesimally small section of our road network it makes up almost a tenth of the total budget. That is a significant amount of money that is not being able to be spent on potholes and patching and resurfacing elsewhere.”

In a city whose roads look like the surface of the moon, the budget strain is acute. The money could resurface around 4.5km of normal single-carriageway roads. Or fill in about 4,000 potholes. Around half of the daily journeys through the tunnel begin and end outside the city. Council tax paid by those motorists doesn’t end up in Glasgow’s pockets. So why is Glasgow City Council footing the bill of such an important piece of national infrastructure?