Bridgeton Cross

The Band Stand in the centre of the former junction

Bridgeton Cross is a historic junction in Bridgeton in Glasgow's East End. It was the meeting place of seven different streets, five of them considered suitable to be made A roads in 1922, with a layout that can be loosely described as two adjacent crossroads. In recent years, one of the streets has been closed up, another made buses only, and two more are now one-way with traffic calming, making the junction a lot quieter. As far as can be ascertained, only the A74 still passes through the junction.

Today, then, the A74 passes through Bridgeton Cross on London Road, the northerly of the two East-West routes. It meets Olympia Street at a crossroads, the southern part being buses only, and the northern part is a partially cobbled side street. Orr Street, on the further side of the Olympia Building, is closed up. To the south of the paved area around the cross, Dalmarnock Road comes in from the south east, Main Street from the south and James Street from the south west. All three were once A roads, but now appear to be unclassified, with James Street one-way westbound, and Main Street one-way northbound.

History

The junction in 1922

As originally classified in 1922, the A74 approached along Dalmarnock Road, and then crossed over to head west on London Road. James Street and the eastern part of London Road were the A732, while Main Street was the A731. This was all changed when the A74 was re-routed in 1936, taking over the eastern part of the A732 along London Road. The A749 was extended to reach Bridgeton Cross on Dalmarnock Road, while the western part of the A732, along James Street, became an extension of the A737. This remained the case into the 1970s, but at some point the A74 was re-routed again, and followed James Street, taking over the former A737 route. This led to the A749 being extended into the city centre along London Road.

The bus gate in the middle of the junction was installed at some point before 2008, effectively severing both the A74 and A749 routes. While signage had been changed or moved for the A74 route, the A749 was left in some form of limbo, and the OS failed to update their maps to show the new situation. The maps were finally updated in c2015, and showed the A74 diverted back onto London Road, as far as Arcadia Street, which was followed to the further end of James Street. The A749 also appears to have been diverted onto James Street, making Arcadia Street a multiplex, although the accuracy of this mapping has to be questioned when it took so long to make the update in the first place. Since then, the A749 has once more been severed, and as far as signage and most mapping (but again not the OS) are concerned, both Dalmarnock Road and James Street are now unclassified.

Routes

There are no signs at the junction, as there are very few movements left available to traffic

Route	To	Notes
A74	City Centre	former A749
A74	Carlisle (M74)	former A732
	Dalmarnock	former A749
	Glasgow Green	former A749, A737, A74, A732
	Rutherglen	former A731