THEY have jetted from America and Australia, caught the Eurostar from the continent and the train from Kings Cross.

Georgia, Belarus, Finland, Italy, even Saudi Arabia - thousands of performers and punters have made a considerable effort at not inconsiderable expense to be in Edinburgh today for the official start of the Fringe, the world's biggest and arguably best arts event. And down the road in Glasgow? We're probably washing our hair. Again.

Not all of us, it has to be said. The Festival Fringe has been having a push in Glasgow. For the second year running, travellers at Queen Street station can stop off at the Fringe's Glasgow box office before indulging in the nightly game of Guess the Platform (what would we do for exercise without that minutes-to-go sprint for the train?).

They built the Queen Street box office and, in true Field of Dreams fashion, some people came. The Fringe website declares: "Total ticket sales coming from Greater Glasgow postcodes increased by 19% from the 2011 figure", which means little without knowing what the 2011 figure was. I did ask, but was told that only a headline figure for the total number of tickets issued in 2012, 1.8m, was available.

Even so, we can take it there has been an increase in the number of tickets sold to Glaswegians, which is impressive, but surely only worth two cheers rather than three. Glasgow is the city's next-door neighbour, an entertainment capital in its own right with citizens who like to spend, and spend often, on going out. Given that, it is worth asking why Glaswegians are not buying vast numbers of tickets. It's like having an Olympic Games on the doorstep every year and eight in 10 Londoners staying away, or being an hour's drive from Vegas and never seeing a show.

August in Edinburgh is not without its debates. This year, a major worry is that the Fringe, just one part of festivities, is a bubble economy that is about to burst. Pippa Bailey, a producer and director, summed up the problem: "As a microcosm of wider society, the Fringe system mirrors an unstable economy, a sub-prime market waiting to implode with artists prepared to spend beyond their means and operate at a loss while hope and desperation drive this bubble economy."

It is true that Edinburgh at festival time now resembles a city under siege, and those who have the easiest time of it are invariably the well-to-do. Though the Fringe Society has frozen registration fees since 2008 and does its best to point performers in the direction of cheaper accommodation, it remains the case that a kitty for Edinburgh, one that will last until the Fringe ends on August 26, has to start miaowing at a couple of thousand pounds. No problem if you are a TV commissioning editor with an expense account, but a pretty hefty addition to the overdraft of any performer yet to come within a sniff of a living wage.

Glaswegians might be staying away in protest at this iniquity, showing solidarity with those at the sharper end of this cultural market economy, but it is doubtful. Of the many political causes to be taken up by the good citizens of the city, the right of a student theatre company from Birmingham to explore the works of Joyce using Broadway melodies is unlikely to ever be pressing. So what does keep the majority of Glaswegians at one side of the M8 while the mother and father of all parties rages at the other? Why does the average Glasgow citizen respond to the Fringe with three little words that are not "Two tickets please" but "Haud me back"?

It is a tale of two cities more than mere miles apart, and the causes are as much practical as spiritual. On the practical, transport side, it is true there are extra trains running from Edinburgh to Queen Street at 00.01 and 00.30, but before that the fast service is still half-hourly after peak time, so much hanging around ensues. If you need to catch a train to the suburbs of Glasgow after returning on the midnight trains, too bad, it's a taxi on top. All in, venturing from Glasgow to an evening at the Fringe involves a costly and lengthy rail journey or parking charges so high you might have to do some impromptu busking to raise enough money to liberate the vehicle from the car park. All that before even buying the tickets. At a time when the entertainment industry is fighting hard to tear people away from their big-screen televisions, Edinburgh is barely lifting a finger. Going from one major city to another in Scotland has to be made far easier than this. It should be a jaunt, not a cross-country expedition involving the packing of sandwiches and the nursing of a vague hope that you will get there in time for the show.

If Glaswegians can be persuaded to put their faith in public transport, the cultural divide between the city and the Fringe is the next, Grand Canyon-sized gulf to be crossed. The reasons why Glaswegians, and certain Glaswegians in particular, fail to visit the Fringe is the same reason why they have never visited the Scottish Parliament building or the book festival or the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. That is the "other" Scotland, the Establishment Scotland, which is as closed to the poorer citizens of Glasgow as it is to those of Dundee and Stirling, Argyll and Ayrshire, and many points in between. We pride ourselves that the cultural cringe that used to exist among Scots when confronted with matters English has largely disappeared, but what of the cultural cringe that persists to this day between those from the wealthier postcodes of Scotland and the poorer ones? When the Festival Fringe Society says that the Fringe is open access, they mean open access to performers, not Scots from all walks of life and all income brackets.

To borrow the phrasing of that late, great Glaswegian Stan Laurel (wonder how he and Oliver Hardy would have fared on the Fringe?), you can lead a horse to water but a Glaswegian cannot be made to buy a ticket for Edinburgh's festivals. The Fringe in particular is a huge Scottish success story, bringing in £142m. At the thousands of shows there are some terrific nights out to be had. If a performer can't cut it in the Darwinian badlands of Edinburgh they probably should not be in the business of show at all.

But it says something about the cultural and economic cohesion of modern Scotland that a world-class arts festival happening just down the road has no trouble persuading people from abroad to attend, but leaves the vast majority of folk in the city next door unmoved. Edinburgh is rightly proud of what it gives the world each August, but its festivals cannot consider themselves a genuine cultural success until Glasgow loves them too.