Last week, I met up with SPT to discuss the future of Glasgow’s Subway. The ‘Clockwork Orange’ is in urgent need of renewal and the engineers and managers I met with explained the various alternatives there are for its future.

One option is simply to do nothing, leaving the Subway facing closure within a few years and Glasgow without a popular and effective transport resource that has been in place for over a hundred years. At the other extreme is the possibility of a major programme of extensions and enhancements – and while I’d love to shift Government spending from the road-building programme to public transport, none of the other political parties are willing to back that.

I can understand why SPT are pushing for their favoured option – modernisation of the existing network in the form of new trains, new signalling, new ticketing, and a refurbishment of the existing stations. This would still require a great deal of investment, but SPT have put together a plan in which they could borrow much of the cash and then operate the system while making repayments.  This would be funded by a combination of their own revenue and about £6m per year, over 30 years, contribution from the Scottish Government. The annual Government contribution would be a relatively small amount within the overall transport budget for Scotland, and would ensure the future of this key transport system as well as creating the opportunity to improve the service and disabled access.

Beyond the questions around funding, I also took the opportunity to quiz SPT on a range of other issues and ideas. SPT could look at using heat pumps underground to bring in extra revenue from renewable energy within the system. There are disused tunnels in Glasgow which could be developed for other uses, such as safe cycle routes away from the traffic. And I’d love to see SPT release their live traffic data on buses, trains and the underground so that third party mobile applications can spring up to provide real-time information about public transport in the city. Transport for London has done this, so other people can produce cool stuff like this!

It is vital for SPT as well as all levels of government to be bold and imaginative if we’re going to offer sustainable and effective public transport systems that are fit for the decades to come. Glasgow needs it more than most parts of Scotland, and it’s scandalous that we see instead deeply damaging roadbuilding schemes while our public transport is crying out for investment.