New figures show the way we're using the roads in Glasgow is changing, but we may need to go further, says Mark Smith

Here we go, into town, from Pacific Quay to Queen Street. I can’t take the car because it’s not LEZ-compliant and even if it was I’d have to find somewhere to park and raise the money somehow to pay for a parking ticket. I could take the Subway but I wouldn’t get back because it’s Sunday and the subway’s shut by 6pm (6pm!) In the old days, I might’ve jumped in a cab, but a taxi is pushing 15 quid these days. So apart from walking (ha!) there’s only one option left. I have no choice.

As it happens, it’s fine, rather good, better than it used to be certainly. Back in the 1990s, I cycled most days from Shawlands to my job at The Daily Record and you had to take your chances by the side of the road in those days. Now there are lots of cycle lanes in Glasgow – I don’t think the word ‘network’ is justified quite yet – and I can use the lanes to do my journey into town, from Pacific Quay to Queen Street.

Or at least, I almost can. The first part of the trip near Pacific Quay is along the side of the road because there’s no bus lane, and roads means potholes so I use the pavement for a bit, naughty Mark. I’m then able to follow a cycle lane along the south of the river, which links into the cycle lane past Barclays, and on into town. It’s then that it goes a bit wrong: there are bits of cycle lanes but at times it’s hard to tell how to get from one bit to the other; then I’m in the confusion around George Square, and my destination, Queen Street station, is at the other end of a one-way street. So pavement again, very naughty Mark, and I’ve arrived.

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Tricky though the journey on Sunday was at times, it’s a lot better than it used to be thanks to the proliferation of bike lanes, even though my attitude comes and go because, like anyone else trying to get somewhere, I suffer from multiple identities. I’m on my bike so I’m a cyclist. I get off so I’m a pedestrian. I get in my car so I’m a driver. And so my reaction changes. Sitting in my car in a jam, I have been known to curse the cycle lanes because without them there would be two lanes for the cars. But then I get out of my car and on to my bike and I think the lanes are a jolly good idea.

But there’s no doubt what the lanes have done: they have changed my behaviour and the behaviour of thousands of other people too. According to new figures from Cycling Scotland, more bikes than cars have been recorded on a major Glasgow road at peak times for the first time. The data shows that over 48 hours in September last year, 334 bikes travelled on Victoria Road from 8-9am and 5-6pm, compared with 270 cars. Victoria Road is part of the “South City Way” network of bikes lanes into town and counters on the road recorded 131,324 bike trips in September 2025, compared to 70,827 in September 2021 – an increase of 85%.

Cycling Scotland may have got a little carried away when they said the figures wouldn’t look out of place in the Netherlands, but the stats are pretty remarkable, particularly in a wet, cold and hilly place like Glasgow that’s still designed round cars. However, the charity does appear to be right in saying that the data shows that where councils are building cycle lanes and networks, there are big increases in people travelling by bike. Something similar has happened in Edinburgh with the West East Link, where cycling has been up 90% year on year.

The South City Way (Image: Cycling Scotland)

And somewhere in those figures is me because the number of times I’ve used a bike has increased dramatically in recent years partly because of the lanes and more recently the Voi e-bikes which are great. Some of it is also because of the factors I mentioned at the start: the LEZ zone, the cost of taxis, the fact that the subway still shuts on a Sunday at 6pm (6pm!), but it’s probably evidence of a sort of nudge effect: the idea, you’ll remember (popular with the likes of David Cameron) that the best way to change people’s behaviour isn’t through force but through a series of small “nudges”. I have never been forced to stop using my car and start using the bike more, but slowly, nudge by nudge, it’s become something that works better for me and so here I am, nudged on to my bike, and it’s fine, it works.

It’s important to keep things real though. On that bike ride into Queen Street on Sunday, a car got very close to me while overtaking and perhaps, in his rear-view mirror, the driver saw me saying words my mother told me not to say. This is not uncommon: drivers getting too close, cutting you up, and I’ve been knocked off my bike a couple of times over the years. I also remember an expert on head injuries telling me once what can happen to a cyclist’s soft, fleshy head in a collision with a hard, metaly car, and it’s on your mind, if you’re a cyclist and out on the road; it’s dangerous, risky.

Which makes me wonder if, as well as better bike lanes, we also need a change in the law. I’m remembering another conversation I had with an expert, a lawyer this time, Brenda Mitchell, who has campaigned for a system of strict liability for car drivers. It would mean that, in the event of an accident involving a car and a cyclist, the car driver would be assumed to be at fault unless proved otherwise. Some might say we should all be treated equally under the law, but Ms Mitchell points out that equality on the roads is really an illusion because no matter how hard a cyclist hits a car, the people inside the car will not be injured but the same cannot be said of the cyclist. It’s a fair point, and it’s also the way it’s done in much of Europe.

The bigger point is that, with tweaks to the law or to the roads or whatever, with little nudges, we can make cycling less dangerous and easier and more enjoyable and cyclists less vulnerable and it’s already happening. Like everyone else, when I’m in my car-driver identity, I can get irritated by changes that seem to make the city harder and slower and most of us will prefer our cars most of the time. But the figures from Victoria Road and elsewhere show that the system is actually starting to work. Because the city has changed a bit, my behaviour has changed a bit and that’s fine, it works. I’m on my bike, haring down one of the bike lanes, and I’m happy.

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