A8/route
Edinburgh City Centre – Newbridge
The A8’s eastern terminus is Edinburgh’s East End junction, where it helps form the Scottish hub of the road numbering system – the A1, A7 and A900 all meet at this junction and delineate zones from this very point. The famous Princes Street, central Edinburgh’s shopping hub, nominally covers the first westward mile but also provides the A8 with its first conundrum – its length has been restricted to buses and occasional goods vehicle use and as such can’t really be considered to be the proper route of the A8 anymore. Some maps show the A8 finding its way on adjacent streets whereas others show it disappearing completely.
South Charlotte Street carries through traffic onto the westernmost section of Princes Street, with vehicles travelling between the west end and east end of Edinburgh forced to go Queen Street - North Charlotte Street - Charlotte Square - South Charlotte Street - Princes Street - Lothian Road - West Approach Road, rather than anything more direct. Less than 100 m further, Princes Street comes to an end at West End Junction, where beside the famous landmarks of Fraser's department store and the Caledonian Hotel, it meets the A90 and A700. The A90 runs north to South Queensferry and the Forth Road Bridge, but the turnoff is now for buses only and the adjacent part of Queensferry Street is also restricted. The main route for traffic is to the south along Lothian Road (A700), which depending on your intended destination offers a right turn onto the West Approach Road, or forks left to the Meadows and A7, and right, along the A702 out of the city to Biggar and (via the A703) Peebles.
Meanwhile, the next section of the A8's traditional route west is along Shandwick Place, which since the return of Edinburgh's trams has seen traffic restrictions; the West Approach Road to the south is now the main route for most traffic. Traffic (even buses) heading west must then make another detour via Torphichen Place and Morrison Street, while eastbound traffic takes the straight route along Atholl Place. On the positive side, Coates Crescent/Atholl Crescent form a picturesque oval either side of Shandwick Place.
The rest of the A8’s sojourn through the west of Edinburgh is much more straightforward. Traffic going via Morrison Street rejoins at the Haymarket junction, where the A70 heads towards Lanark, and the A8 at last becomes a proper 2-way route for motor cars: a wide carriageway makes the rest of the journey with priority over all other roads in the vicinity.
At Wester Coates, it goes under the 1861 Roseburn Terrace railway bridge which carried the former Caledonian Railway line from Slateford to Granton via Murrayfield Station just to the north of the road; the railway line is now a cyclepath and footpath despite plans to adapt it for trams. The road crosses the Water of Leith on a high bridge at Roseburn, with an older, lower bridge just downstream. It then passes Murrayfield Stadium to its south and Edinburgh Zoo which reaching up Corstorphine Hill to the north. It goes through the former village, now suburb, of Corstorphine, to the Drum Brae roundabout with the B701, the proto-City Bypass. It finally takes on the moniker Glasgow Road at this point and the speed limit rises to 40 – not much of the capital left to negotiate now. A dual carriageway opens up just in time to meet two of western Edinburgh’s most important (and most modified) junctions.
The first of these is Maybury Junction, which was modified from an at-grade roundabout to a traffic-light controlled junction sometime in the late 20th century. The major road met here is the A902, the closest thing Edinburgh has to a northern companion to the A720. The seemingly unimportant fourth arm, titled Turnhouse Road and signed for a side entrance to Edinburgh Airport for cargo, is actually the historic start point of the A9. Westwards from here used to be a primary route (as did the A902) but the green signs are now being replaced with white ones, all the way out to the motorways at Newbridge.
Almost immediately the A8 terminates the A720 City Bypass proper at Gogar Roundabout, which was also at-grade before the A8 was fed under it, around the same time Maybury was modified. It’s the first grade-separated junction on the A8 (there’ll be a few along the way at sporadic intervals) and heralds the start of a three-mile stretch of higher quality dual carriageway through some countryside. Even now that a parallel M8 exists to the south (constructed in 1995) traffic is split evenly between the two routes because only the A8 offers access to the ever-expanding Edinburgh Airport. This route also serves the Ingliston Showground, the home of the Royal Highland Show – meaning for four or five days of the summer, it becomes unbearably busy and requires a horde of police and temporary signals to control access in and out of the site.
The road rolls into Ratho Station, a small settlement/technology centre, before it pulls up to the Newbridge Roundabout offering access to the M8 and M9. Before a 1995 remodelling (coupled with the extension of the M8 to Hermiston Gait) this used to be another flat roundabout at which both M8 and M9 terminated, dumping all Edinburgh-bound traffic on to an unbearably busy A8. The 1995 works eased its pain but through all the changes, one thing remained constant: the A8 has a terminus here, and doesn’t reappear for over thirty miles. To continue the journey back to the other end of the A8 gap, take the motorway to the left – it has a confused identity, having been M8 in its past, is now a direct continuation of the M9, but still signed M8 here because it leads inescapably to the M8 anyway.
Newbridge – Newhouse (downgraded)
The A8 simply ceases to be at this point, because the Scottish Office (and its devolved successor) has the policy of downgrading any road that has been replaced by a motorway which carries its traffic. All over Scotland the same process is followed; this is why the once grand A74 has now been reduced to three miles of suburban carriageway in Glasgow.
The route of the former A8 can be found in older maps, but can also be evidenced on the ground today by the extra-wide verges it unfailingly displays throughout its length. This whole section of the road was engineered with the intention of being turned into a dual carriageway – every building and farm (with a few modern exceptions) is set back a carriageway’s width further from the road than it should be. There are even a few double-width overbridges, left twice as engineered as they need be. Presumably, once the concept of a motorway was invented, it was decided that the Edinburgh-Glasgow road would be built elsewhere.
Back at Newbridge, the road that claims the title of ex-A8 is the A89. In fact, the A89 number was pressed into use specifically for the purpose of downgrading the A8 in this area. Westward, Broxburn has two major routes through it, now A89 and A899. Confusingly, both have at different times carried the A8, but the original with the wide verges is the southern one (A89). It continues through a few industrial estates and shadows its motorway descendant to the north of Livingston and as far as Boghall.
Here, the ex-A8 and A89 split identities; the A89 winds off to serve Bathgate whereas the old A8 takes a south-westerly route now as the A7066. It too was a number pressed into use specifically for the purpose, although initially as B7066 and re-upgraded to A-road status when the authorities realised it was still pretty busy. So busy in fact, that this is just about the only part of the abandoned A8 route that realised its potential to be dualled; ironically, to serve an industrial estate that no longer exists.
North of Whitburn, there’s a roundabout with six classified exists in the middle of nowhere. What was A8 to A8 is now A7066 to A706, and so continues for a mile or so down to Whitburn proper. This is the first point of the route at which the traditional route is inaccessible because of a modified junction. Only for a few yards to get back under the A8, but there’s an abandoned overbridge wide enough for a dual carriageway that gives the game away. The route is rejoined after a junction and another split; the B7066 is now the ex-A8 from here, past Harthill, to a quarry west of Eastfield.
Once more at this point, things get complicated. The next section is the only part of the intercity route where the upgrade to M8 took place directly atop the old A8 – from here to the eastern outskirts of Salsburgh. This was the very first section of M8 constructed, and contains the modern day Junction 5. The temporary termini on each side can still be made out as Llynallan Road, an unclassified road serving a couple of isolated houses, buts up to the motorway side and then runs out of steam; clearly, it once joined the motorway here. Both the M8 (atop the old A8) and the B7066 find their own way to Salsburgh, where they again run against one another and the historic route transfers between them. Some of the old link roads remain visible from the air; they were obliterated when the M8 was extended up to the next junction westwards.
The extra-wide nature of the former A8 is at its clearest here, cutting Salsburgh nearly in two. The B7066, having regained its wider verges, makes it to Newhouse and a roundabout just to the south of M8 Junction 6. The end of the replaced route comes here, borrowing 150 yards of the A775 and then swinging north to the very edge of the modern road by the Newhouse industrial estate. The fact that this road, left serving nothing by realignment and industrial decline, still carries the name Glasgow and Edinburgh Road is a dead giveaway. The old road now joins with the new.
Newhouse – Baillieston
Originally the A8 became the primary road between Glasgow and Edinburgh here since this part was the earliest dualled and the new M8 was simply plugged onto it at both ends. It was (and still is) a much lower standard of road than the M8 so traffic jams and slow progress were common here.
Junction 6 was where motorway restrictions ended but the M8 upgrade works stayed primarily online here. However a distributor road was needed for non motorway traffic so a dual carriageway was constructed with each carriageway separated by the M8 and interrupted by 2 dumbbells (junctions 6A and 7) where access to the M8 was provided (westbound facing slips only). After Eurocentral the M8 and A8 split and run their separate ways for about 5 miles to Ballieston.
Formally the busiest junction on this section was Shawhead for the A725. The A725 southbound forms a short-cut to the M74, and as such, is the best way to make a west-to-south movement here; routes from Edinburgh and north-eastern Scotland to anywhere in western England will use this junction; a fact that makes it perplexing that it was built to such a low standard. There were formally two exists westbound and almost no priority to the major movements – the way the junction is built, you’d think half of Edinburgh commuted to Bellshill on the B7071. The slip roads are short, tight, winding, and plentiful.
An uninterrupted burst takes the road up to the A752 at Bargeddie Junction – this one’s primarily for a shopping park and cinema complex. This comes just before the massive Baillieston Interchange, where the A8 originally re joined the M8 towards Glasgow and became downgraded once again. Today the A8 heads under the railway bridge and climbs up to the right to encounter a Roundabout with the A89 from Coatbridge. Continuing left we wiggle under the Ballieston junction and encounter the newest member of the motorway network, the A8(M), which has been created to keep the Ballieston junction a pure blood motorway junction. Turning right at this junction takes us back to the original route though Glasgow.
Baillieston – Langbank
Crossing into Glasgow City Council’s boundaries, there is half-mile link from Baillieston roundabout to the suburban road network where the A8 crosses its stepchild, the A89, in Baillieston proper. From there, it cuts an impressive swathe straight into the city centre on a two- and three-lane limited-access dual carriageway through most of the east of the city, right up to the terminus of the A80 – itself once an impressive intercity route suffering piecemeal replacement. Two dual carriageways then feed their traffic into a single lane along Alexandra Parade, right up to the northeastern edge of the city centre. It sweeps alongside the M8 and sliproads are dropped between them, the A803 and A804 in the unfathomable tangle that is Townhead Interchange. The A8 through-route turns to the south and skirts the Royal Infirmary, taking traffic down into the city centre proper. Its line (and importance) would have been overtaken by the eastern flank of the Glasgow Inner Ring Road has it ever been built.
Passing directly outside Glasgow’s mediaeval cathedral, it eventually fights through the highly redeveloped areas of the High Street, Glasgow Cross, and Saltmarket, before crossing the Clyde. To achieve this in Glasgow’s one-way tangle, southbound traffic continues uninterrupted across the Albert Bridge, whereas northbound traffic must use the next one upstream, the Victoria Bridge. Both find different routes to round the south-eastern corner before finally combining once more beneath the Kingston Bridge – leaving the city centre as it entered it, in a tangle of sliproads with its synonymous motorway.
The joined A8 can now continue westward uninterrupted as Paisley Road West into Ibrox, where complications emerge again. Straight on at this junction was once the A8 but it’s now the A761. Today’s A8 turns right, becomes a dual carriageway outside Rangers Football Club all the way to the A739 junction near the Clyde Tunnel. Shortly thereafter, the M8 once more makes another close approach. Just as it did at Harthill 20 miles back, there was a temporary junction here while the M8 was under construction (its run from here to modern day junction 30 was once A8(M)). Passing city limits, the still-dualled road serves a massive shopping park, Braehead, which spans the short green gap from Glasgow to Renfrew.
Another roundabout, another rerouting. The dual carriageway dead ahead is the A877 road to Renfrew town centre. The A8’s new routing is slightly to the south, into what looks like a terminus on the A741 but is actually just an offset crossroads. The rest the road out of Renfrew is a single carriageway that crosses the confluence of the Black Cart and White Cart Water on a peninsula at the northeastern extremity of Glasgow Airport (unlike Edinburgh, without access this time). For just about the first time in the entire journey, the A8 is now a rural road, bypassing Inchinnan and Erskine to the south, sharing the Red Smiddy roundabout with the A726 before it crosses once more back under its motorway nemesis (obliterated junction still visible). Bishopton is not bypassed; instead the road ploughs through, out the other end, and makes a bee-line to back to the M8 for the umpteenth time. But this time the A-road wins the battle and terminates the motorway a mile east of Langbank, butted up against the Clyde estuary – its companion for the rest of the journey.
Langbank – Greenock
For the last eight or so miles, the A8 regains some of its former glory by once more becoming a dual carriageway trunk route. Much of this last stretch has been modernised by reclaiming land from the estuary for new bypasses to the north of coastal towns. There is not however much in the way of grade separation, and the route to Greenock via Port Glasgow is frequently interrupted by roundabouts (nine, including the Bullring) and local accesses (at least eight of which are controlled by lights). The Port Glasgow bypass is in its second iteration on the reclaimed waterfront (the third if you count the original route through the town centre) – the road between the Woodhall and Newark Roundabouts was rebuilt closer to the water when the first bypass became swamped by urban growth. Newark Roundabout now also terminates the A761 (it previously terminated at Blackstone Roundabout on the south side of the railway) – a road with both ends on the A8.
A mile further west and a retail park has been built directly atop the road’s original route, forcing a bypass with three more roundabouts to slow the journey. Once negotiated, the Clyde, A8, and railway line all make a bee-line for Greenock proper, through the industrial outskirts – this was once prime shipbuilding land and is slowly being regenerated. There’s another left at a roundabout to avoid a plunge into the firth before the road comes right up next to the old docks and meets its end at the curious Bullring Roundabout, which is elevated above ground level and features a car park directly beneath. The numbered roads from here are the A78 into Ayrshire, or the A770 on to Gourock port – or all the way around and back down the A8. Container Way (as the name suggests) provides a link from the roundabout to Greenock Ocean Terminal, as well as to Customhouse Way which provides access to the waterfront attractions and thereby an alternate route to re-join the A8 at Rue End Street, beside Greenock Police Station.
Greenock – Gourock (downgraded)
That may be the end of the journey for the A8, but it’s not the end of the story. There was a time when the A8 crossed the Bullring and continued north-west on Dalrymple Street – today’s A770 – a relatively wide suburban road set a block back from the waterfront, right through Greenock and out the other end into Gourock. Its terminus was directly adjacent to Gourock railway station and ferry port – to this day there are regular sailings across the firth to Dunoon. The A78 also once terminated here; the relocation of the joint terminus was the result of a new A78 southern bypass for Greenock – built in 1985 – cutting the corner to the Bullring and leaving a loop vacated by their collective curtailment that became A770.