SPT, which operates the Subway in Glasgow, has announced a number of one-day Subway closures to help facilitate the continued rollout of Subway Modernisation. 

These short closures over a number of Sundays starting in November will allow our contractor teams to work intensively on the efficient and safe installation of cabling and equipment within the Subway tunnels. It is also expected that a number of closures will also follow early in 2023.

The planned Sunday closures in November have been scheduled for:

• 6 November 2022
• 13 November 2022

This additional time the closures give the Subway Joint Venture (JV), contracted to deliver the Subway modernisation programme, will progress the installation of our new signalling and communication systems for the new trains. This work involves laying cables between stations and then mounting them onto brackets within the tunnels.

The closures will also give the JV the opportunity to progress initial civil works required to strengthen our station platforms to enable the installation of Platform Screen Doors (PSDs) at a later date.

Director of Subway Antony Smith said:

“A single Sunday closure is equivalent to several regular nightshifts and means the programme will significantly progress the new signalling installation and accelerate our overall plan.  By extending the time the team has to work on this installation, it will be completed more efficiently and, importantly, safely.

“We have chosen Sundays for a number of reasons.  Sunday is always our lowest daily patronage and due to our early Sunday closure, the lowest number of staff are impacted.  Whilst our patronage has recovered much better than most modes of public transport (c.85% of pre-Covid), Sunday remains our lowest patronage day by some measure.  This can obviously be impacted if we have football on a Sunday, and so we have tried to avoid that with no planned closures if there is football scheduled at Ibrox. 

“Currently, we plan for only two Sundays prior to Christmas, this is to ensure that we are able to support the commercial efforts of the city centre retailers, and support the Christmas shopping needs of our customers.”

Further closures will re-commence mid-January 2023, these dates will be announced in the New Year. 

SPT is currently investigating the potential to run a limited shuttle bus service on the Sundays of the planned closures, covering the busiest routes.