On This Day

Tuesday 2nd July 1963

57 years ago

The first completed tunnel tube of the Clyde Tunnel beneath the River Clyde in Glasgow, for northbound traffic, was opened by Queen Elizabeth II, with the southbound tunnel opening in March 1964. The total cost of the project was £10 million.he tunnel is the length of seven football pitches and sits 21ft below the River Clyde. More than 250 tenements were demolished to make way for it, along with a church and several bowling greens. A number of allotments were also sacrificed. The tunnel was designed to take 9000 vehicles per day but now handles more than seven times that number – as many as the Forth Road Bridge. More than 25 million vehicles use it every year. It’s the only road tunnel in Scotland. And when it was built, it was the steepest in the world, with a 1:16 gradient. A car doing 30mph takes 57 seconds to drive through it – and holding their breath while in the tunnel has been a popular game for generations of Glasgow schoolkids.