Six month build plan -- now that is more like it ...

None of the avenues plans have enough trees to really feel like the environment is softened and that the harder edges of the city with lots of 70's architecture have the harder edges taken off them because of the trees. I was recently in London and there recent avenues developments with two long lines of trees planted quite closely together do exactly that. This is more like a "replace pavements" programme than anything else. So far it has all been hugely disappointing Holland St included!

Wow, could they make these renders any more appealing... although I will concede these are pretty accurate to how grim the final designs will inevitably be, so hats off to the CGI guy on that one!

@#1
Surely 6 months is far too long given your secret fast-track construction programming ability? :)

Anything that imporves the public realm here is welcome, but what the second image really shows is the need for some kind of urban intensification given we're only 2 blocks away from George Square. Blank frontages, gap sites, poor edges etc etc. The city runs out far too quickly. There is, of course the DRF for the area but recent initiatives from the council (consultation on the open public space in Townhead) doesn't quite cut it and the built fabric appears long past its best.
Townhead needs a root and branch makeover, with densification to support some proper neighbourhood shops and services. Could you imagine if we introduced New Gorbals principles here, but upped the ante with denser typologies, proper perimeter blocks and linear park on the ghost lines of Parliamentary Rd?
Remember the housing Expo in Inverness back in 2010 or so - we could do with one here to demonstrate a real commitment to repopulating the city centre and make Townhead a neighbourhood worth walking that extra 2 or 3 blocks from George Square.

More new traffic jams caused by narrowing of roads to facilitate cycle lanes that very few use. Vehicles stuck in congested traffic, churning out fumes. So much for cleaner air in LEZ zones. Well done Gcc. Who's kidding who?

It's unbelievable that the same basic urban design and transport mistakes are being rolled out again and again across the city – a ridiculous waste of time, money and precious resource.

It feels like they actively dislike cyclists, drivers, pedestrians, small businesses, community and our planet's ecology with this concrete jungle nonsense.

Admittedly this design looks fractionally better than some previous versions. So perhaps there is some small hope. Am not holding my breath though.

#5 That reads almost verbatim like my postgrad thesis project, right down to focusing on the townhead estate. Of all the Urban Realm regulars you seem to be the most consistently on the money, it's nice to see some sense among the noise.

@#8
Very kind.
Seems to make a lot of sense for Townhead. New active travel routes are great, but what about a proper vision for a new neighbourhood ?

I should also say that when I mention root and branch, I do not mean tabula rasa development. We need a msterplan for the whole area but implemented incrementally.

Yes / yes / yes ...

That is what Glesga needs -- more middle class welfare for masterplanners.

No / No / thrice no.

#5 Are you sitting fuming in the traffic? If so, you are the traffic. Too many cars/vans trying to use city centre routes. City centres are about people not cars. Find another route.

@#11
I honestly haven't the slightest idea what this post means in relation to my post. And in the context of having FBOT as a contributor to the tread - that is truly impressive work.

@#10

Please expand /explain if you can. :) Joined up sentences and making some general sense will help.

I will try to help.

Perhaps your friends at #11 and maybe even #10 are trying to point out to you that the policies you support of building non-functional cycling lanes, blocking parking spaces and destroying small business, removing second lanes on roads, blocking junctions etc. and generally bad design messing up the flow of traffic are wasting money and resources plus creating clouds of fumes and stress as cars idle in chaotic badly designed urban transport chaos.

All this while we still wait for the real alternatives to come along.

And I know you will now ask this as your main metric here is to constantly ask other people to explain themselves in great detail and justify their positions rather than you explaining the actual failure of the schemes that you relentlessly support so I will have a go and do that for you as well.

These would be-

Free and fast proper public mass transit, good urban design, fast cycle highways, focus on good efficient traffic flow while we still have cars and proper shared space for low speeds in the city centre.

And an immediate stop to car bound green field suburban developments that are still being built at a large pace.

Furthermore the regeneration of beautiful buildings and inner areas that have been forgotten about, only talked about as a possible 'retrofit' fashion accessory that rarely materialises in reality.

Of course these don’t come with the special heavy funding and shiny virtue signalling nonsense baubles and propaganda that your policies come with and would involve a lot of difficult hard work and design nouce to implement.

So many people in the industry continue to support the status quo of total failure and splattering our money and precious resource to create pollution with brainless sticking plasters that don’t work.

Time to wake up and smell the noxious anti-human fumes you are creating.

Yeah.., erm... not an especially helpful contribution given that the 2nd and 6th paragraphs seem to contradict each other. It does have a ranty and and resentful tone that doesn't really help the cause either.
Heaven forbid asking anyone to 'explain or justify themselves' :) However it would be helpful if you could back up the claims in the 2nd paragraph with facts rather than just making assertions.

#11 - I'm with Roddy, your points don't really make sense.

"Are you sitting fuming in the traffic? If so, you are the traffic." - That's just a cheap slogan used by environmental protestors. In practice you need to provide alternative capacity on trains, trams, subways, buses before you starting reducing the car-carrying capacity of roads. Glasgow hasn't done that, presumably because it's more difficult and expensive than building bike lanes.

"Too many cars/vans trying to use city centre routes." - Vans and lorries need to make deliveries to businesses: without them, you'll have no jobs, no activity, and no city centre. That would be counter-productive, wouldn't it?

"City centres are about people not cars." - City centres are about everything we collectively need in order to make them work properly. Again, if Glasgow provided decent public transport, there wouldn't be so many car journeys.

@#14

PS If you think that I 'relentlessly support' the schemes featured in UR, you're clearly not a regular reader.

PPS It would be worth referring to #5 which, I think, offers a qualified critique and a cautious welcome of the new infrastructure.

Many people in the city oppose policies that are believed to be damaging and dangerous, and it's important to speak out against them. If it upsets you because you support these policies then you could either re-examine and make a much better case, change you opinion or simply remain upset with your choice.

The concern is specifically with failed urban transport and design policies in Glasgow, not any other UR topics. These policies are producing outcomes that are the opposite of their stated intentions, thus the contradiction referred to.

It will be difficult to find any formal studies that provide the kind of evidence you'll be requesting to show this but it is rather obvious to the end users and logical thinkers outside of their well intentioned ivory towers.

The public bodies responsible for implementing these policies realistically won't fund research that might reveal negative consequences so don't expect to find it.

To gain a better understanding of the real-world impact of these policies, you could speak with people who regularly walk, cycle, use buses and drive in inner Glasgow, especially those essential workers who drive for a living as well as those who own small businesses in the affected areas. You'll likely hear about the consequences of these policies: increased congestion from blocked roads, the resulting air pollution, cycle lanes that simply don't work well at all, injuries, blocked walking routes, potholes next to pointless newly poured tar and concrete, the difficulties people face trying to find parking, and the damage to local businesses and visits within communities.

Meanwhile, the necessary alternatives to these policies have not been adequately developed at all, no mass public transit, cars still everywhere and car bound developments still being built, leaving the situation worse than it was 40+ years ago when these discussions began with a huge amount of costs and resources wasted along the way.

We can do an awful lot better than this.

Mental plan for a 20% reduction in private car use by the SEG has now been dumped.

How stupid are our political class and the Nats in particular -- ridiculous plan put forward by box ticking halfwits who are not engaged with the real world.

Happy to sit back and applaud a 50% increase in Motability cars -- as long as someone else was paying -- and mouth platitudes about reducing pollution.

And all the while the parking congestion infecting our post war blue collar estates grows steadily worse.

Reducing car use as a great plan but your colonial government in Edinburgh and their wee pals in Glasgow don’t understand that you need to build the foundations of proper mass transit, good inner city new housing rather than car bound sprawl and cycling plus walking infrastructure that actually works before you can implement this.

Otherwise your plan will just collapse as is happening all around with choked traffic, parking chaos, potholes, dangerous and dysfunctional cycle lanes and blocked walking routes with destruction of small business and consequent inhuman fumes and stress all around.