The Bridges to Nowhere is a colloquial nickname given to two unfinished structures 600 metres apart over the M8 motorway in Glasgow. Both attracted a degree of notoriety as examples of the incompleteness of the Glasgow Inner Ring Road. One has since been completed as an office block, and the other remains unfinished almost forty years after the opening of the Kingston Bridge, however is now earmarked for completion in 2013. A third "Bridge to Nowhere" was created in 2008 following the destruction of an adjacent hotel.
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It is something of an urban myth that this structure, which has the official title of the Charing Cross Podium, was ever intended as a bridge. Regardless of its physical appearance, it was always intended to have a development of some sort on the top level. When the western flank of the inner ring road was being prepared for tender in the mid-1960s the designer, Scott Wilson & Partners, advised Glasgow Corporation to include the development as part of the motorway construction contract. This advice was ignored with the Corporation hoping that a developer would take the project, along with costs, on themselves.
As a result the podium remained incomplete for over two decades, attracting much notoriety at a time when the entire M8 construction project was the subject of very divided public opinion. In the mid-1990s Glasgow District Council at last found an interested party, and a short time later an office block was built. Occupiers of the building known as Tay House include Barclays Bank.
The Anderston footbridge 600m south of the Charing Cross Podium was originally planned as the main pedestrian connection between the residential areas of Anderston and the city centre. The bridge was intended to connect to the Anderston Centre shopping and office complex at its eastern end, but the second phase of this development was never built – meaning that the bridge terminated in mid air some 40 feet above what is now a car park for a Holiday Inn hotel (now the Glasgow Marriott) that went up in 1982.
As a highly visible structure, it assumed the title of 'Bridge to Nowhere' from the Charing Cross Podium after that was built on and lost its bridge-like appearance.
A current proposal by charity Sustrans, called Connect2, aims to finish the construction, as well as connecting the half-finished bridge with a second one over the Clydeside Expressway. This aims to improve pedestrian and cycle access in central Glasgow, by incorporating the bridge into a scheme to provide a pedestrian and cycle route between Kelvingrove Park and the city centre.
In September 2011, it was announced that Sustrans had secured the necessary funding and work to finally complete the bridge would begin in 2012, completion being scheduled for early 2013. [1]
Glasgow gained a third "Bridge to Nowhere" in 2008, in the same area when the pedestrian bridge that strides Waterloo Street connecting the adjacent Anderston Centre to the former Albany Hotel - only a few hundred yards to the west of the Anderston Footbridge - was demolished. The hotel was controversially razed[2] in preparation for a new complex called Bothwell Plaza, work on which was supposed to start immediately. As of 2011, works on the building had still not started - the owners of the land citing the poor economic conditions as the reason, with the bridge stub terminating in mid air above Waterloo Street.