r/Glasgow Tools

Title
Author	Scunnered20
Comment	Funnily enough Glasgow used to have close to that population inside our city boundary. One of the biggest problems caused by moving half of the population out to the sticks to new commuter towns in the 60s is that it made public transport much less viable for the region. Not impossible, but incredibly costly, inefficient, and to this day it places a structural burden on the transport system which isn't entirely sustainable. It's hard for a bus line to be both 1. rapid, and 2. serve a customer base that's spread across a wide area. It can't do these things at once, and since we our buses need to serve highly dispersed populations, we sacrifice journey times and reliability, making them less appealing and convenient for all users, whether out in the sticks or in the centre. On top of that, the same traffic that buses have to fight through is made up of people who might otherwise have been fare-paying passengers in a different timeline. Vehicle traffic is what killed off trams in the first place and trolley-buses not long after. We're still living with its impact on our bus network. One of the best things we can do is find ways of moving people closer to the centre of the city, and where that isn't possible, closer to transit hubs. Rather than continuing to build sprawl far away from train stations or along motorway corridors. I say all this simply to make the point that its not necessarily a bad thing if we have more people living in Glasgow. More people can equal more people sustaining and supporting the city's transport system.
Reddit Link	https://www.reddit.com/r/glasgow/comments/10oy0f3/sunrise_over_great_western_road/j6i4pc7/
Created	Mon 30th Jan 2023 2:32pm
Status	normal ()

Funnily enough Glasgow used to have close to that population inside our city boundary. One of the biggest problems caused by moving half of the population out to the sticks to new commuter towns in the 60s is that it made public transport much less viable for the region. Not impossible, but incredibly costly, inefficient, and to this day it places a structural burden on the transport system which isn't entirely sustainable.

It's hard for a bus line to be both 1. rapid, and 2. serve a customer base that's spread across a wide area. It can't do these things at once, and since we our buses need to serve highly dispersed populations, we sacrifice journey times and reliability, making them less appealing and convenient for all users, whether out in the sticks or in the centre. On top of that, the same traffic that buses have to fight through is made up of people who might otherwise have been fare-paying passengers in a different timeline. Vehicle traffic is what killed off trams in the first place and trolley-buses not long after. We're still living with its impact on our bus network.

One of the best things we can do is find ways of moving people closer to the centre of the city, and where that isn't possible, closer to transit hubs. Rather than continuing to build sprawl far away from train stations or along motorway corridors. I say all this simply to make the point that its not necessarily a bad thing if we have more people living in Glasgow. More people can equal more people sustaining and supporting the city's transport system.