Transport that connects communities
Good transport is essential to connect people with opportunities, jobs and services, friends, family and basic essentials, but too often people in Glasgow experience poor connectivity, making their lives harder and inequalities deeper. Getting Glasgow moving better will also help us cut emissions and toxic air pollution. Our vision is for a fully-integrated, low carbon, publicly-owned transport network which is accessible, efficient and affordable. We want to reduce the number of private car journeys, promote healthier travel, re-imagine public space and make Glasgow a more attractive place to live, visit and do business in.
Deliver a walking, wheeling and cycling revolution
We will:
- Deliver plans for a comprehensive walking and cycling network, which is accessible to people of all ages and fitness levels and disabled people, and which consistently complies with Cycle by Design guidance, with the vast majority of routes delivered in the next Council term.
- Implement a city-wide 20mph speed limit on all residential roads in the first year of the council term, and take strong action on pavement parking and idling vehicles.
- Bring forward Low Traffic Neighbourhoods in every community, reducing the impact of traffic and prioritising space for residents and sustainable travel.
- Extend the Accessible Design Forum to cover all public realm and active travel projects, so that disabled people have early input at design stage, and identify opportunities to reduce unnecessary ‘street clutter’ as much as possible.
- Implement pedestrian priority at signalised crossings, extend ‘green man’ crossing times, and identify opportunities to increase the use of zebra crossings, including side-road zebras, and continuous pavements.
- Ensure that major cycle routes through public parks are kept open during events or that any diversions will allow all people, including disabled people to cycle or wheel safely and add minimal distance.
- Require contractors working on public roads to use the correct signage and ramps when closing cycle lanes and footways, and use all routine maintenance works as opportunities to improve active travel.
- Extend the NextBike roll-out to include cargo bikes and family travel options.
- Increase secure on-street cycle storage and make this affordable for people in flats and tenements.
Expand free and affordable public transport
We will:
- Continue to champion affordable, and increasingly free, public transport to tackle the climate emergency and address social inequality.
- Deliver Scotland’s first local pilot of free public transport, with an emphasis on connecting areas with high levels of deprivation and low transport connectivity.
- Lobby the Scottish Government to extend free bus travel for young people to also cover the Subway and future Clyde Metro connections.
- Develop options for a free publicly-owned electric shuttle bus service in Glasgow city centre.
- Require sustainable travel plans for all major events in the city, and work with event organisers to include free public transport within the cost of an event ticket.
Action to join up journeys
We will:
- Repair the mistakes of Glasgow’s transport past by ensuring an empowered and directly-funded regional transport planning and delivery authority, tasked with planning the network seamlessly, and able to run more of its own services.
- Embed the sustainable travel hierarchy in all transport decisions, prioritising measures to reduce travel demand, and setting a target to halve the number of local journeys made by private car by 2030.
- Implement a Workplace Parking Levy to reduce demand for private car use, and to raise funds for investing in sustainable travel.
- Deliver integrated, tap in/out ticketing across different transport modes and providers.
Better buses
We will:
- Use all the powers available through the Transport (Scotland) Act 2019 to enable bus franchising and bring forward publicly-owned buses, to create a well-planned network, capped fares, integrated journeys and ensure services are provided where they are needed.
- Ensure bus services meet more people’s needs, including more night-time services, more space for bikes, prams and wheelchairs, and multilingual information and signage.
- Improve reporting of harassment on-board and at bus stops
- Extend bus lanes and expand bus lane hours, to improve bus journey times and reliability.
- Use powers for remote enforcement so that cameras can be used on buses to identify illegal parking in bus lanes, on footways and on active travel routes.
- Introduce a ‘guide to using Glasgow buses’ sign at every bus stop, co-designed with New Scots, to explain how to hail, pay, and stop a bus in common community languages
Stronger rail connections
We will:
- Promote greater use of the current suburban rail network and campaign to reverse cuts to services on lines like the Cathcart Circle.
- Support plans for a new Clyde Metro light rail scheme, insisting that this meaningfully connects to the most cut off areas of the city, and is delivered as soon as possible;
- Ensure that all Metro proposals are fully accessible and work to improve accessibility for the whole public transport network, especially urgent step free access at train stations.
- Continue to support the case for local station reopenings, including at Ibrox, Blochairn, Finnieston and Parkhead.
Reduce the need for and decarbonise private car use
We will:
- Expand car-sharing schemes and consider subsidising car club membership in areas with higher levels of poverty and as part of vehicle scrappage schemes.
- Recognise the important role that taxis play, particularly for shift workers, for the night time economy, and for people with mobility needs. We will support taxi operators to sustain their businesses and transition to low emission vehicles.
- Support the roll-out of electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure in neighbourhoods, public facilities, and via new developments. We will ensure that charging points do not take away existing pedestrian space.
- Consult on and introduce a workplace parking levy, and lobby the Scottish Government to extend levy powers for councils to include other non-residential parking spaces.
- Create an action plan to reduce overall car parking spaces in the city each year while extending the controlled parking zones, and support conversion of parking spaces to green corridors, green spaces, pocket parks and play areas
Address transport inequalities
We will:
- Consider how to better support people who tend to need to use several journeys to meet their destination and who have to travel with children, dependents, shopping, etc.
- Extend the Subway’s operating hours and also commission a review of public transport and other mobility options for people working shift patterns.
- Take an equalities approach to transport infrastructure maintenance - for instance, applying a gender test to the prioritisation of winter gritting routes to improve safety and access.
Begin a conversation on the M8 motorway
We will:
- Commission research into options to reduce the adverse impacts of the city-centre sections of the M8, including smaller localised changes, as well as more significant long-term redesign.
- Work with partners to design and consult on detailed options arising from the research.