Glasgow’s greatest scar – could we really cover over the M8?
I ask him what he thinks of the M8 now, in 2025. "The scar still hasn't healed," he says. But there's an idea about how it might be done, an idea that wouldn't heal the scar necessarily but place a kind of bandage on it, a cover, a cap. It's not a new idea - Hunter Reid, the former student at that protest over the opening of the Charing Cross stretch in 1972, remembers people talking about a cap at the time.
But the idea is gathering support. There are new projects in the area that point the way. And there are examples from around the world of how it could be done.
But can it be done in Glasgow, should it be done, will it be done, and what are the potential effects for the city? 
Deborah Mulholland owns the Brides in the City shop on St George's Road on the edge of the M8. Just down the road from her store is the infamous Bridge to Nowhere that houses an ugly salmon-pink office block and to either side are the precipitous drops down to the motorway. This is what happens when the car comes first.
The area is tired, says Deborah, and action is needed. "Investment is needed in the area for sure, especially with it being a junction onto Sauchiehall Street," she says, and she likes the concept of a cap that would hide the traffic underneath. "I love the idea," she says. "It would transform a tired area into something special and anything that will attract people to the area and hopefully encourage people to use local businesses and attract new ones is a big yes from me." So what might it look like? Glasgow City Council prepared outline plans for a cap in 2022, which show a new green space over the motorway between Sauchiehall Street and Bath Street.
The council said the plans would connect with their Avenues Programme, the GBP115m project to improve 17 streets, including Sauchiehall Street, and they applied for money from the UK Government's Levelling Up Fund for the cap. The UK Government said no. Supporters of the idea haven't given up though.
Another good sign is that the area is attracting new development that could pave the way for a cap. Planning permission has just been given to Charing Cross Gateway opposite the Mitchell. There'll be office space, 450 apartments and 750 student flats.
The infamous Bridge to Nowhere would go and there'd be gardens and pedestrian walkways, all aimed at taming the 1960s ugliness and clearing a possible path for an M8 cap. There are losers of course. The Baby Grand piano bar has been on the site for 40 years but closed for the final time on Thursday [January 30] after being given notice to quit. "Those in power have decided it's time for demolishing and renewal so we are getting knocked doon," said the owner Billy McAneney.
He said the area used to buzz with workers from Scottish Opera, Yarrows, HMRC, and other offices. It's a reminder that not everyone hates the Charing Cross area as it is, or was. 
Stuart Patrick, chief executive of Glasgow Chamber of Commerce, says he supports the idea of a cap in principle but that it's "complicated". "You're not going to get me to say 'you know what, we should get rid of the M8," he tells me. "I would struggle to see how you could do that so we're not going to go down that road. But the idea that Charing Cross is a natural barrier to entry from the West End into the city centre is an issue."
Another related question for him, for all of us, is the state of Sauchiehall Street which would lead into the cap - "we're struggling with it," he says. So the question for him is how the cap fits into the others issue in that part of Glasgow. The first, and most obvious question, is who might pay for a huge project like capping the M8 and Patrick thinks the money that's coming in through projects like Charing Cross Gateway could be part of the solution (with a little help from the Scottish and UK governments).
"One of the criticisms we're getting at the moment is that there's too much money going into student accommodation," says Patrick, "but a lot of that is about where the sums add up. We'd love to see some more thinking about how you get build-to-rent residential investment into the city centre." He says changes to Scottish Government policy around rent controls could release hundreds of millions of pounds by opening up the area to developers who would contribute money to improving public spaces, including helping to pay for the M8 cap.
"I'm not saying that would fund the cap," he says, "you're almost always going to need public money because of the expense involved. But you might be able to get a certain amount of private money to contribute to it. There's deals to be done."
He also points out that the city council hasn't given up on levelling-up money from the UK Government. "That's still an option," he says. "The debate will be: do you want to spend that money on a cap or do you want to spend it on improving the general public realm in the city centre? We support the cap, but not before we've developed George Square." The obvious other question is: what are the practicalities of building an M8 cap?
We've seen what the redevelopment of Sauchiehall Street has done to the city, and it's still not finished, so what on earth would the cap project entail on Scotland's busiest motorway? Hunter Reid, the architect behind the renovation of Maryhill Burgh Halls and one of the students who was at that protest on the M8 in 1972, thinks a cap is entirely feasible and practical and might go some way to returning the area to the pleasant place he remembers before it was demolished. "A huge swathe of the city was bulldozed without recognition at all of the edges," he says, "of how you would integrate the motorway into the urban fabric.
A 200metre-wide strip was just bulldozed through and it was such a fabulous space with Charing Cross Mansions and the ground round about it." Its destruction made him sad then, he says, and makes him sad now. We talk about the motivations that were at work at the time, the idea that Glasgow needed a great big road right through the middle of it. The underlying idea was that the city should be decentralised and people should move out to the suburbs to live.
And that meant new roads to get them there fast. "It could have been so much better done," says Reid. "And it's all about finances. If the road had been dropped another five to ten metres, it could have gone in a tunnel or they could've bulldozed it and built a deck back over it and repaired it."
We talk for a couple of minutes about how it might work and look and it's a nice thought. Imagine getting to the bottom of Sauchiehall Street and strolling through trees and bits of parkland across to the Woodlands area or down to the Mitchell. You might also get a more coherent sense of an area incorporating Woodlands, Garnethill, Charing Cross and Sauchiehall Street.
It would certainly be much more attractive than it is now. Reid not only likes the idea, he thinks it could be accomplished without causing massive disruption. "I'm not saying there'd be no practical problems but there aren't any that you couldn't resolve," he says. "Obviously, there's going to be disruption but a lot of it could be prefabricated and preformed and brought along the motorway." The good news is that there are examples from around the world where similar projects have been successfully completed: the eight-lane motorway that cuts through Dallas in the US for example.
There had been talk of putting a deck over the road since the 1960s but it finally got the go-ahead in 2004 and a five-acre deck, named Klyde Warren Park, was built and opened in 2012. The design of the Dallas cap suggests how it might be done in Glasgow. Essentially, hundreds of concrete beams were arranged over the freeway and concrete slabs were then connected to the bottoms of the beams, forming trenches.
The trenches then acted like giant planters, allowing for the planting of trees and the development of the park. Kit Sawers, president of Klyde Warren Park, says the freeway through Dallas was, like the M8 in Glasgow, built in the 1960s and created a significant divide. "It split downtown and uptown Dallas, making it harder for people to connect and leaving the area feeling dominated by cars rather than people," she says. "What was missing was a true gathering place, a town square where people could come together." 
Building a park on top of a motorway came with its challenges, says Sawers, but careful planning made it possible. The benefits have also outweighed the costs, she says. "We now welcome more than 1.3 million visitors a year and offer over 1,300 free programs and events annually. People come from all around the world to experience it, and the park has become a model for innovation: there are more than 70 deck parks across the US currently being designed or built based on Klyde Warren Park's success.
Most importantly, it's become the town square Dallas was missing, a space where people from all walks of life can come together, whether it's for yoga, food trucks, concerts, or just to relax outdoors." Sawers says she would also encourage Glasgow to consider something similar. "I would absolutely encourage other cities to consider freeway caps or lids. For Dallas, the park hasn't just mitigated the negative effects of the freeway, it's turned a barrier into an asset.
It has reconnected communities, provided vital green space, and sparked economic growth in the surrounding area. Klyde Warren Park shows that when vision, collaboration, and investment come together, you can create something truly transformative." So I speak to Glasgow City Council to get an update on their position.
They tell me that, having worked with partners and consultants in 2021/22 to explore the technical and economic feasibility of the M8 cap and apply for Levelling Up funding, their conclusion was that the primary benefits of a cap would largely accrue from the link to the Mitchell Library. But they also tell me that the technical assessment established this would not be possible due to the limited headroom above the railway tunnel that runs underneath the M8 at this point. This is something Hunter Reid has also observed but says is solvable.
Three options were assessed by the council. One: a cap from Sauchiehall Street to Bath Street along with a pedestrian bridge linking the Mitchell to Charing Cross station (as opposed to the full cap). Two: a full cap from Sauchiehall Street to around Kent Road.
And three: just a cap from Sauchiehall Street to Bath Street. The council spokesman tells me that in the end it was hard to see the economic benefits. "It was very hard to demonstrate positive economic benefit and enough benefits generally to justify the price tag which would have varied from around GBP50million for option 3 to over, and possibly well over, GBP80million for option 1. Option 2 was ruled out completely on technical grounds."
Stuart Patrick of the Chamber of Commerce also believes the cap won't happen unless the bigger issues facing Glasgow are tackled, such as the decentralisation of the population. But standing on the walkway over the M8, like Hunter did in 1972, it's hard not to see this part of the city as a problem that needs fixed. Some businesses still cling on.
Others have gone, like the famous Koh I Noor restaurant (only the K and the H are left hanging to the sign now). The problem here is that people don't linger and why would you? This is a place that says: the car rules, not people.
And 50 years on, the scar is still here, raw, uncovered, unhealed.
Mark Smith is a Herald columnist and feature writer