A739

This article is about the A739 in Glasgow.
For the original A739 in Ardrossan, see A739 (Ardrossan).

Route

The A739 is a busy road linking the western districts of Glasgow. As its route includes the Clyde Tunnel, it was the main way from the South West of Scotland to North Scotland before the completion of the Erskine Bridge in the mid 1970s.

Southern section: Craigton – Clyde Tunnel

The A739 starts at an at-grade traffic-light-junction with the A761. There is a short section of S2 before it becomes D2. This passes the suburb of Cardonald. We soon arrive at our first major road, the M8. After going over the railway line by Cardonald station we bear left to get to the junction, a diamond-dumbbell hybrid.

Clyde Tunnel South

After the mess that is J25 of the M8, we go over the A8 roundabout which only has south-facing sliproads (if we wanted the A8 we should have continued ahead instead of turning left by the station). After we reach the northbound onslip we pass the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital campus. The turn off comes and goes and we bear right then left to enter the Clyde Tunnel.

After about a mile, we blast out of the Tunnel and we pass a turn off (the original entrance and exit of the Clyde Tunnel) to a local road (this road used to be part of the main A82 Glasgow - Inverness road: the number A82 was re-allocated to the newly constructed Great Western Road/Boulevard in the 1920s with this road taking on the number A814) before the Victoria Park interchange with the current A814. The junction here is another hybrid junction: a diamond-whirlpool hybrid.

Northern section: Clyde Tunnel – Canniesburn

After emerging from the Clyde Tunnel and the tangle of slip roads at its junction with the A814 the road heads north as Balshagray Avenue, passing the eastern end of Victoria Park. It's very busy traffic-wise as it carries traffic to and from the Clydeside Expressway (A814) and the Clyde Tunnel.

Crow Road

It makes its first traffic-light-controlled junction with Victoria Park Drive and Victoria Park Gardens on the edge of the Broomhill district, followed fairly quickly by another with Crow Road. It heads north as Crow Road into the Jordanhill district, crossing under two railway bridges to another traffic-light-controlled junction, this time with Southbrae Drive. Continuing north into the Anniesland district, there is a traffic-light camera on the southbound section at a pedestrian crossing. The road then becomes a dual carriageway in preparation for the tangle of traffic lights that is Anniesland Cross, its junction with Great Western Road (A82) and Anniesland Road (formerly the A806, and now unclassified).

It continues north as Bearsden Road past a large superstore, through the Temple district and then crosses the Forth and Clyde Canal and two railway lines before leaving the City of Glasgow and crossing into East Dunbartonshire (Bearsden and Milngavie prior to local government reorganisation in 1996) at the edge of the Westerton district (at one time this was known as Westerton Garden Suburb). It becomes Switchback Road, well named as the road rises and falls as it enters the Canniesburn district on its approach to its northern end at Canniesburn Toll, its junction with the A81 and A809.

An amended OpenStreetMap trace for this route awaits uploading to the SABRE Wiki.

History

The A739 number seems to have been reallocated specifically for the new Clyde Tunnel and its approaches. The only sections to be classified beforehand were north of the Clyde, namely the A806 north of Anniesland Cross, and the B813 along Crow Road to the south. The reason why the A806 number wasn't simply re-routed through the tunnel is probably that it would have taken the number out of zone, and back in the 1960s people still cared about such things!

External links

• The Clyde Tunnel: information from Glasgow Council