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Artist's impression of Clyde Fastlink at Broomielaw by Glasgow City Council

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Clyde Fastlink

Artist's impression by Glasgow City Council

Location

Clyde-wide

Type

Current

Description

In response to the regeneration along the Clyde Corridor, Glasgow City, Renfrewshire, and West Dunbartonshire Councils together with SPT have developed proposals for a regional bus rapid transit (BRT) system called Clyde Fastlink to serve key sites along the rapidly developing northern and southern banks of the River Clyde.

The Fastlink BRT system will represent a step-change in bus services in the west of Scotland. It will provide frequent, high quality and high priority services capable of providing a ‘turn-up and go’ service during peak hours. BRT has been selected for Fastlink rather than tram as it can deliver similar benefits but operate on roads at substantially less cost and disruption. Some of the key features of the system will be:

• dedicated ways and lanes, high priority measures on road and at junctions
• state of the art vehicles
• high quality infrastructure (such as halts, real-time information, CCTV)
• halts located at 500m – 1000m spacing
• high frequency service at peak times

Fastlink will operate over a 24km route from Glasgow city centre to the Clyde Arc Bridge at Finnieston where it will service the major venues north of the river at the SECC and the New Riverside Transport Museum before travelling out through Glasgow Harbour and out to Clydebank College, the major regeneration site at Clydebank Rebuilt and terminating at the Golden Jubilee Hospital. Using the Clyde Arc Bridge to the southern bank, Fastlink will also serve Pacific Quay, Govan town and the new Southern General Hospital as well as the major Braehead retail and leisure complex before terminating at Renfrew harbour. Fastlink will also be able to provide additional public transport capacity to several key venues during the City’s Commonwealth Games in 2014.

Current status

An initial phase from Glasgow city centre to Glasgow Harbour was granted planning approval in 2006. This led to the consideration of a wider regional scheme and the most recent feasibility study during 2008/09.