The city of Glasgow, Scotland, has a transport system encompassing air, rail, road and an underground light metro line. Prior to 1962, the city was also served by trams. Commuters travelling into Glasgow from the neighbouring local authorities of North and South Lanarkshire, Renfrewshire, East Renfrewshire, and East and West Dunbartonshire have a major influence on travel patterns, with tens of thousands of residents commuting into the city each day. The most popular mode of transport in the city is the car, used by two-thirds of people for journeys around the city.
Most streets in the centre of Glasgow are organised in a grid-iron pattern laid out in the early 19th century, with streets running north-to-south and east-to-west.
Transport authorities
Glasgow's transport network is administered by a number of authorities. Transport Scotland is responsible for the construction, expansion and maintenance of trunk roads and motorways within the city (such as the M8, M73, M74 and M77 motorways), with the city government, Glasgow City Council responsible for all other roads. The Strathclyde Partnership for Transport is responsible for strategic transport planning for the region, including coordinating services amongst the various private bus operators, and also operates the Glasgow Subway. The local rail network is operated by ScotRail.
Airports
Glasgow has two international airports and is also served by a seaplane terminal.
Glasgow International Airport (GLA) is the closest airport to the city and handles the majority of Glasgow's air traffic across its two terminals. This includes shuttle flights to and from London and the rest of the UK, continental flights to various cities in Europe and long-haul transatlantic links to cities such as New York, Cancún, Orlando and several Canadian cities in addition to Dubai.
The airport was opened in 1966 and typically handles over 10 million passengers a year, making it the second-busiest airport in Scotland and the ninth-busiest airport in the United Kingdom.
The airport sits to the west of the city in the town of Paisley and is connected to the city via the M8 motorway.
Glasgow Prestwick Airport (PIK) is located 29 miles south west of the city in South Ayrshire and focuses on short-haul leisure flights to Europe, low-cost airlines and freight traffic. Prestwick is Scotland's fifth-busiest airport in terms of passenger numbers, but its largest in terms of land area.
Glasgow also has a Seaplane Terminal located in the city centre on the River Clyde. This offers services to the Scottish islands and the far north.
There are also two small airfields in the nearby towns of Cumbernauld in North Lanarkshire and Strathaven in South Lanarkshire.
Motorway network
Glasgow is a focal point of Scotland's motorway network. The network is heavily used at peak times and is one of the most comprehensive in the United Kingdom, connecting the city centre with the rest of the sprawling Greater Glasgow area.
M8
The M8 is Scotland's busiest motorway, running from the capital city of Edinburgh, approximately to the east of Glasgow, through the centre of Glasgow and on to Bishopton in western Renfrewshire, further west. The motorway was built in sections starting in 1964 and was finally completed in 2017. The city centre stretch of the M8 was originally planned to form part of a wider Glasgow Inner Ring Road, a proposed ring road encircling the city. The inner ring road plans were later abandoned, however a similar motorway ring around the eastern part of the city was later completed in 2017 as part of the M74 extension.
The motorway begins at Junction 1 in the west of Edinburgh and travels westwards through West Lothian and North Lanarkshire to the north-eastern outskirts of Glasgow at Easterhouse, meeting the M73 at Baillieston Interchange. Previously the section of road between Junctions 6 and 8 in North Lanarkshire was incomplete and not built to motorway standard; the road instead used a small section of the A8; however in 2017 the 'gap' was finally closed with a new six lane motorway built to connect both sides of the M8.