A DECISION to ban cars from part of the centre of Glasgow has been criticised, with one motoring expert claiming it will cause congestion.
The city council has installed a bus gate at Nelson Mandela Place, which will result in around 800 cars each day being banned from the north side of the square.
Roads bosses say the move to allow only buses and taxis to use the north side will cut congestion and pollution.
But Neil Greig of the Institute of Advanced Motorists (IAM) has warned diverting so many vehicles up Hope Street, to Cowcaddens Road and down North Hanover Street will cause chaos in the city centre.
He said: "This is a major change.
"It is inevitable there is going to be more traffic sitting in the city centre.
"People will be looking around for the diversion and that will lead to extra congestion in an area which is already congested."
Mr Greig also warned air quality is likely to be affected along the diversion route.
A council spokesman said: "One of the aims of the bus gate is to reduce the number of vehicles travelling through the city centre while improving provision for public transport.
"This will reduce congestion and pollution - making the city centre a more attractive destination."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article