Motorway M8 – Wikipedia

The highway M8 It is the most used of Scotland, and one of the most used in the United Kingdom. ^[first] It connects the two main cities of the nation, Glasgow and Edinburgh, and also serves other large centers such as airdrie, Coatbridge, Greenock, Livingston and Paisley. The highway is 97 km long, excluding the interval of about 10 km between the Glasgow district of Baillieston and Newhouse. The highway has a service station, located in Harthill, and ends in Langbank.

With the advent of the period of construction of the highways in the United Kingdom in the late 1950s, the M8 was designed as one of the most important of the new highways, in order to replace the A8 road as an alternative to high capacity for travel out of town. The motorway was built in a fragmentary way in several stages, circumventing the cities starting from 1965 with the opening by the Secretary of State for Scotland George Willis of the stretch of Harthill. In 1968 the Renfrew Bypass and the A8 (M) became part of the M8 when the highway was connected to it to the west. ^[2] The internal part of the city of Glasgow was built between 1968 and 1972, using a project defined at the end of the Second World War, which aimed to field a series of works to relaunch the city. The project evolved into what would become the Glasgow Inner Ring Road , a highway that would have surrounded the city center, connected to the Renfrew Bypass to the south-western margin and the Monkland motorway (built on the former Monkland Canal route) towards Edinburgh on the north-eastern margin. Together, these three motorway sections are the current M8.

Much of the highway was complete in 1980; Since then, the only additions have been a new interchange with the M80 Motorway in 1992 and an oriental extension of 6.4 km from Newbridge to the then new Edinburgh City Bypass in 1995, and a new exchange at the Kingston Bridge in Glasgow that Connect it to the new extension of the M74 in 2011. ^[3] The remaining sections not finished between Baillieston and Newhouse, which are part of the Scottish government project for the M8, M73 and M74 motorways, began in early 2015, ^[4] Together with the other works to improve connections to the local road network, to the M73 and M74. ^[5] The end of the works is scheduled for spring 2017. ^[4]

Starting from the Edinburgh City Bypass, the road heads west towards the crossing with the M9 towards the Ford Road Bridge, passing through the northern part of Livingston and south of Bathgate. Continue through the Scottish central belt before ending in Newhouse. The next section, originally designated as Monkland Motorway , begins on the border of the city of Glasgow at the junction for the M73 (the main interchange point for all routes to the south, through the M74), before going through the neighborhoods of Barlanark, Riddrie, Dennistoun and Townhead (following the path of the Monkland Canal abandoned), heading towards the city center. The central part, the incomplete Glasgow Inner Ring Road, contains several junctions that lead to local communities such as Cowcaddens, Garnethill, Kelvingrove and Anderston. Then he crosses the Clyde river on the Kingston Bridge, and heads west through Kinning Park, Bellahouston and Hillington before leaving Glasgow. To the west, he passes through Renfrew and Paisley, bringing the traffic directly beyond what was the main track of the Renfrew airport, before the junction for Glasgow airport. He passes south of Erskine and ends in Langbank, about 16 km east of Greenock. ^[6]

The M8 nominally includes some sections of the European roads, in particular the E05 (Langbank-Baillieston) ^[7] and the E16 (Newhouse-Edimburg), ^[8] Although neither is reported, like all other European roads in the United Kingdom.