Glasgow Subway
Glasgow is one of only three British metropolitan areas that has an underground metro system; the others being London and Tyne and Wear. The Glasgow Subway (previously Glasgow Underground), was built in 1896 and substantially modernised in 1977. It has a single circular route. This, taken together with the orange-coloured paintwork of the carriages, has led to it being known, by guidebooks more than the locals who still refer to it as the "Subway", as "The Clockwork Orange".
Despite being the third oldest subway system in the world (after London's and Budapest's), it has never been expanded beyond its original route. Reasons given for this have invariably related to Glasgow's geology: the tunnels are excavated from rock, and for this reason they are also smaller than London's. An SPT study into a possible expansion of the subway has been mooted. It would extend further into the West End, East End and Southside of the city which may cost up to £800million to build. Much of this expansion might utilise disused railway tunnels that have been abandoned since the Beeching cuts of the 1960s.
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Famous quotes containing the words glasgow and/or subway:
“When this immediate evil power has been defeated, we shall not yet have won the long battle with the elemental barbarities. Another Hitler, it may be an invisible adversary, will attempt, again, and yet again, to destroy our frail civilization. Is it true, I wonder, that the only way to escape a war is to be in it? When one is a part of an actuality does the imagination find a release?”
—Ellen Glasgow (1873–1945)
“In New York—whose subway trains in particular have been “tattooed” with a brio and an energy to put our own rude practitioners to shame—not an inch of free space is spared except that of advertisements.... Even the most chronically dispossessed appear prepared to endorse the legitimacy of the “haves.””
—Gilbert Adair, British author, critic. “Cleaning and Cleansing,” Myths and Memories (1986)