Clyde Tunnel facing £25m repair bill to remain open

One of Scotland’s busiest river crossings will need over £25 million worth of repairs over the next decade years to stop it from closing, a new report has warned.

A Glasgow City Council assessment into the impact of maintenance costs has found that the Clyde Tunnel needs £5.3m of the work completed as a matter of urgency.

A report by the city’s infrastructure chief Andy Waddell stated: “The annual cost to Glasgow City Council of operating the tunnel is £950,000 per annum.

“In addition to this, the tunnel and its approaches need capital investment of £25m over the next 10 years to maintain their safety and availability to the public.”

Mr Waddell said among the most urgent issues are fire evacuation systems, which need “life-preserving enhancements”.

And the tunnel’s electrics, which are 30 to 50 years old, are described as “very fragile, obsolete and liable to fail”.

The tunnel, which goes under the River Clyde in the west of Glasgow, was opened in 1964.

It carries 64,000 vehicles a day – nearly five times the 13,000 it was initially expected to take.

Despite high traffic numbers, the tunnel is not considered a trunk road, meaning the vast majority of the upkeep must be paid for by the local authority and will not be financed by the Scottish Government.

The council says it receives the same amount of government funding for the route as is handed to a rural road of the same length – £87,600 a year.

This falls short of the annual maintenance bill of almost £1 million, with the mounting repairs and further financial pressure.

The state of the Clyde Tunnel will be discussed today at a meeting of the council’s sustainability and the environment policy development committee where it is expected that councillors will be asked to unite to call on the Scottish Government to provide more funding for the deteriorating tunnel.