Glasgow's buses won the war against city trams - here's why

Thanks to the arrival of the bus, however, that is exactly what happened.

In this week’s column from Glasgow City Archives, archivist Kate Guariento delves into the history of the great Glasgow bus.

In April 1925, a reporter from the Glasgow Times’ sister newspaper The Glasgow Herald asked James Dalrymple, general manager of the Glasgow Corporation Tramways Department, for his comment on the challenge posed to the tram service by the rapidly expanding number of privately-run motorbuses in the city.

“I am satisfied that the motor bus will never supersede the tramcar,” asserted Dalrymple in response.

As the architect of the successful expansion and modernisation of Glasgow’s tram system in the early 20th century, Dalrymple’s defence of the tramways is understandable.

Traffic congestion on Glasgow Bridge, 1914 (Image: Glasgow City Archives)

Less than 40 years after his comment, however, Glasgow’s tram system, once one of the most extensive in Europe, was wound up. The orange and green tramcars disappeared from the city’s streets, and buses, in the same Glasgow Corporation livery, became the dominant mode of public transport.  

The advent of public transportation by bus in Glasgow was, by some accounts, rather chaotic. In 1844, long before Glasgow Corporation turned its hand to the provision of bus or even tram services, a gentleman by the name of Robert Frame had the idea to establish an omnibus service in the city.

According to historian John Tweed, Frame “straightaway put his idea into practice”. He commissioned the construction of an omnibus and decided on the route his horse-drawn bus would take – from Bridgeton to Anderston Cross.

Sauchiehall Street and West Nile Street, bus park with SMT buses, 1934 (Image: Glasgow City Archives)

On January 1, 1845, the omnibus set off on its inaugural journey, with Mr Frame himself in the role of conductor.

Not a single passenger, according to Tweed, dared climb aboard the bus on its outward leg from Bridgeton to Anderston, “though the new means of locomotion was stared at by thousands on the streets.”

The return journey was another story. By evening, Tweed recounts, “the crush for admission became tremendous – great numbers taking a ride for the ‘mere fun of the thing.’”

Events came to a head when, due to pressure from the crowd of passengers, the side panels of the omnibus gave way and the whole carriage fell apart.

“This catastrophe”, Tweed concludes, “put an end to the first day’s omnibus traffic in Glasgow.”

A drivers' view from a Glasgow Corporation bus in 1965 (Image: James Millar/Newsquest)

While not the smoothest start, Mr Frame’s experiment proved, in dramatic fashion, that there was demand for such services in the city.

The mid to late 19th century saw a proliferation of private omnibus firms. By 1870, there were 50 omnibuses in operation in Glasgow, with routes all over the city and into the suburbs. 

After the inauguration of the city’s tram service in 1872, and particularly after its expansion and electrification in the early 20th century, trams became the main form of public transport in Glasgow.

But, as Glasgow grew, so too did the demand for services that could connect the outskirts of the conurbation with the tram network.

A Glasgow Corporation Bus in the snow (Image: Newsquest)

While Glasgow Corporation did extend its tram lines to places such as Uddingston, Giffnock and Lambhill, private motorbus firms continued to compete with the Corporation tram service when it came to bringing passengers into the city.

In 1924, the Glasgow Corporation Tramways Department made the decision to pilot its own bus operation, and purchased 14 single-decker motorbuses for an “experimental service” from Monteith Row to Maryhill.

The experience of travelling along Glasgow’s cobbled streets in vehicles with solid tyres cannot have been a pleasant one, and from 1925 the fleet were equipped with pneumatic tyres.

Over the next few years, there was, in the words of the General Manager of the Transport Committee in 1973, a “bus war” on the streets of Glasgow, as private firms jostled for competition with Corporation trams and buses.

In a report in December 1925, the Glasgow Corporation Tramways Committee complains that, on several routes, there is a “wild scramble” for passengers by private motorbuses, with the result that tramcars are frequently “cut off” when approaching their stations by motorbuses travelling at nearly three times their permitted speed.

In 1927, in a storm of controversy, James Dalrymple resigned as general manager of Glasgow Corporation Tramways Department. Under the leadership of Dalrymple, the Tramways Department had been slow to expand Glasgow Corporation’s bus provision beyond its “experimental” core, viewing the motorbus, in their own words, as an “attack” on the “tramway stronghold”.

The change in leadership, alongside the continued growth of Glasgow’s suburbs, would lead to a substantial expansion of Glasgow Corporation’s motorbus operations in the 1930s – to be explored in a future article.