There will also be an increased demand as hs2 reaches Glasgow.

But by then I can just use an autonomous hover car to drop me and my bike at the top of Ben Lomond instead

Go for it. The world needs more George Bennies and Greatbeardedones.

Are there plans for massive path development up there now then?
Thats new. Certainly not what the FC were saying when they ran all their public consultations on the Kilpatricks.

Brilliant lunacy, count me in for a shot on the cable car!

I’d never heard of the Milngavie railplane, nice one.

Sounds like more of a Shelbyville idea

Still surprised that no ones offered up any more substantive critiques.

The last few posts are indicative of the way that neds think.

Has limmy given you permission not to tuck your tracky bottoms into your socks.

Do you dare break out of your culturally sanctioned beliefs?

Again, why the reference to the skunk weed types…Ive never been that hip, daddy-yo!

Now I feel like the coolest hep-cat in town. 😈

@km79

@km79

‘Stowed out’ and ‘wilderness experience’ aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive.
There will be the ‘honeypot’ areas as well as parts that are way off the beaten track.
The website geograph.org gives an idea of the sheer scale of the area.
Have you been to the ‘gates of sodom’ yet? That’s an interesting area, full of hanging valleys.

http://scotland.forestry.gov.uk/images/corporate/design-plans/Kilpatrick_Hills_Map_5.7.2_-_Current__Future_Routes.pdf

Thought you’d all be keeping abreast of the developments up there.
Kind of a dream area for those of you with cx bikes…miles and miles of gravel.

Better still, once you cycle beyond Dumbarton Muir towards balloch, you’ve got loads of quiet country roads to work at your intervals.

The finnieston crane area thing isn’t so daft. Frankly I don’t know if there’s sufficient bedrock around govan to support the structures.
The volcanic rocks at the kilpatricks might prove ideal to build on. Though my main concern would be finding a way past the pylons. That’s worthy of ‘holby city’

Would be great if it could pass right over greenside res…people queuing up for bungee jumps, lol.

Anyway, back to my pals…they’ve stayed up past eleven pm, listening to jazz and having conversations about beat poets and the like. They’re wild man, wild!!!

http://scotland.forestry.gov.uk/images/corporate/design-plans/kilpatrick-hills-fdp-2014.pdf

You’ll have to scroll down to page 50, that’s where they outline the recreational usage.

How do you interpret it?

Increased accessibility?

Never gonna work. Remember what happened on the bus to Yoker?

A once in a lifetime chance to travel to a pure mad fabled land. However it’s full of Ned Zombie Pirates 😀

Sounds as daft as haemophiliacs knocking back the radical notion of blood banks and clotting agents.

You do know that the city is going to have to come up with a method to curtail private car use in order to meet c02 regulations?
They might achieve this in the Paris style (odd/ even number plates) or even use the Oslo strategy.

Using a cable car to get from m&s at Braehead up to the new housing estates north east of baljaffray rd and then up to the kilpatricks might offer them a modicum of freedom from car dependency.

It’s the way of the world that they’ll build even more houses up there.

Statistically though, you probably stand a better chance of contracting cancer than seeing any radical transport plans.
That’ll mean buying a new bike helmet after the chemo or wearing one of those buffs at the least.

why not reinstate the miles of underground railways then?

I thought it was going from Glasgow? Now you’re going from Renfrew?

Still surprised that no ones offered up any more substantive critiques

We have, you just don’t like them 😉

Basic critique: I don’t see what the user base is. The crossover between people hanging out at Braehead and people who want to go hillwalking or MTBing is pretty tiny. Running it all night in case people want to go stargazing is just daft.

Another critique is the cost – it’d be very expensive to build, for the number of people it could carry – even if it was used fully which it wouldn’t be.

If you want a more practical idea, here’s one: reopen lots of the rail lines that were closed by Beeching, including the one to Strathblane, and build a funicular up the Campsies.

A cable car from Holyrood up to Arthurs seat would stand a chance of paying for itself.

A cable car from a god awful shopping centre full of fat weegies, up to the top of a hill that’s bloody miles away wouldn’t. Unless there was another god awful shopping centre up there, full of fat weegies.

Edit – and the light pollution up there would make star gazing a bit shit.

2nd edit! – and the OP posting at 4am and then not again til the afternoon? I’m calling Ganja.

I’m calling Ganja

I lolled

A cable car from a god awful shopping centre full of fat weegies, up to the top of a hill that’s bloody miles away wouldn’t. Unless there was another god awful shopping centre up there, full of fat weegies

That’s a bit harsh….. Not all Weegies are fat.
Some of the junkies are so thin that the wan eye wid dae them. 😉

That’s a bit harsh….. Not all Weegies are fat.
Some of the junkies are so thin that the wan eye wid dae them.

Skinnier than the gable end of a fifty quid note!

I imagine part of the reason is wind speeds are higher in the north

I imagine part of the reason is wind speeds are higher in the north

Certainly wouldn’t help in winter. Can’t believe I’m even dignifying this with a serious response but the main reasons it wouldn’t work are

There’s no money for it
There’s bugger all up the Kilpatricks
Folk can easily get out into the countryside from Glasgow and the surrounding area
Virtually the same view can easily be reached with no physical effort by parking at the Kyhber Rd car park at Mugdock and walking for 30 seconds
It encourages lazyness
It would cause even more congestion in and around Braehead
A cable car over some schemey estates is hardly prime tourist gold
We can’t even get a train from the city centre to the airport
<cough> Science Centre Tower debacle <cough>

These negative responses are not going to go down well at the next board meeting of Kilpatrick Hills Cable Car Ltd.

“So, greatbeardedone, how did the focus group go?”………” They loved the idea, right?”

Calm down Perchy, he’ll be getting out his bed shortly, then have a pure mad munchy sesh before reconvening with us, less hip mortals

cough> Science Centre Tower debacle <cough>

Well its not fallen over so there is that!

I think the only thing wrong with the OP’s idea is it lack of ambition.

I can see Ben Lomond from Cathkin Braes.

Surely we can just string a wire from one to the other with a couple of stops along the way?

Using a cable car to get from m&s at Braehead up to the new housing estates north east of baljaffray rd and then up to the kilpatricks might offer them a modicum of freedom from car dependency.

Modicum is the operative word there – a small amount where a small amount is desirable. How many people can travel by cable car every hour? If the point is to provide a jolly for a few people who are prepared to pay enough for the spectacle for the costs to be covered then fair enough. But if you’re talking about sustainable transport and weening people off cars then a cable car is an irrelevant sideshow – a novel way do doing a journey once for a small number of people.

Anyway… we’re talking about building a line of pylons and cables across the approach route to an international airport. Even if everything else added up thats quite a problem.

a modicum of freedom from car dependency.

Countryside access around glasgow is very easy via train

cough> Science Centre Tower debacle <cough>

Well its not fallen over so there is that!

I think engineering debacle aside one thing you’ll discover if you are one of the lucky few who’ve ever been up it (I managed a furtive private viewing during one of its periods of fubar) is that the view from the top is…….. utterly unremarkable. There are plenty of better places to view the city from (the Lighthouse, Queens Park Flagpole, the M77) and plenty of better views of the surrounding skyline. The view from there is just dull.

OK what about an underground cable car?

There are plenty of better places to view the city from (the Lighthouse, Queens Park Flagpole, the M77) and plenty of better views of the surrounding skyline. The view from there is just dull.

Spent 5 years overcladding 70 odd tower blocks in Glasgow and can confirm that the best view of the city is to be had from the roof of Viewpoint Place in Balgrayhill, Springburn which is the highest point in the entire city.

Not often the words ‘best’ and ‘springburn’ are seen together!.

if you are one of the lucky few who’ve ever been up it

You can get up it now, it just doesn’t turn any more, cheap Nigerian bearing IIRC.

<late to the party and immediately goes off-topic>

maccruiskeen – Member
My ex- flatmate used to come up with similar well thought through ideas.
He proposed a really tall tower – tall enough to make it easy to launch into orbit from the top with much reduced power / fuel requirements.

Space elevator will be cheaper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator

</as you were>

There are plenty of better places to view the city from (the Lighthouse, Queens Park Flagpole, the M77) and plenty of better views of the surrounding skyline. The view from there is just dull.

The view from the Armadillo across the river is pretty good, though 😉

[url=https://flic.kr/p/7zymrk]Armadillo 4[/url] by Ben Cooper, on Flickr

Much better critiques, well done.
Much more refreshing than being compared to a character from that cererbral pansy’s tv show.

Maybe the trick is to stick a big pie/ sweetie shop up there, after all as Frankie Boyle says “Glaswegians will drive 40 miles for crispy creme doughnuts”.

@ben cooper…but you’d have a struggle getting a battery-powered wheelchair up the armadillo.

Like I said, Braehead might be a candidate…proximity to m8…underground goes to govan…ferry to yoker…loads of parking. Or place it at the sgh, once they’ve decided what to do with the sewage works.

As for running it at night, it might be your best chance of getting up there, what with the school trips to plant saplings, the hordes of silver surfers, people piling in from day care centres from all round Ayrshire and inverclyde…walking groups, walking groups.
By no means least, it would give mourners somewhere to scatter ashes, (lily loch???) other than into the sandwiches of anyone visiting the whangie.

Falkirks got the wheel. My looks alone are not a sufficient to tempt the tourists from Edinburgh!

Still questions about expense?
Lottery, the Arnold Clark cancer fund, corporate sponsorship (stick a greggs on top of the slacks?) and a chance of structural aid from the ec. We’re still a long way from brexit and this could be their way of rewarding our solidarity.

Thing is, if we can manufacture most of the parts in Scotland, each pound will go a long way (multiplier effect) and unlike with cars, the cash doesn’t just go into the pockets of the highly skilled car dealership.

Our pension companies need to start making a modal shift into more public transport investment as it’s pretty much a guaranteed revenue stream. But I’m not naive enough to think that’s the answer to everything, it’s got to be a progressive shift or the public transport would drop dead. Hence we need in each city a transport czar to effect a systematic and logical transfer of transport use.

The cable car at Gibraltar also has to compete with minivans, plying for their customers and the rock’s only got a population of 30,000? Plus tourists…

@boardinbob
Car, car, car!

A lot of working stiffs would gladly get ridiculous their car, what with the running costs and maintenance. But they hang onto them as it gives them a chance to get out the city.

I wouldn’t say that it encourages lazyness. Quite the opposite, it’s the opening up of the views that provides the motivation to keep on walking.

A cable car over the schemey estates would also afford great views of the doggers and cottagers at full pelt. How could you deny the hordes of Japanese tourists their first glimpse of real Glasgow culture one hundred feet below.How could you?

Last time someone took me up the khyber pass, the views were never this good. Better than the queens view? I’d say so. That’s what ‘wagnerian’ means to me.*

I wouldn’t drive your car right up, unless you’ve got the relevant keys. It would be fun, trying to get your car over a five bar gate…

*as well as fat ladies singing Norse and the smell of napalm in the morning.

@lobbydosser
Why not open up the underground tunnels? Probly safety?
Plain clothes cops need a cool place to hang out, other than the bushes at kelvingrove park?
Who knows? Still won’t get you up the hill. mind

Bear in mind, most of the people that need to take advantage of the outdoors are in no fit state to scale a thousand foot hill. They need the views, not to pure boche on the way past the gavinburn.

At the very least the fc should be thinking about putting a ranger centre up there, maybe perched on the ‘windy edge’ at least for the views at sunset.

Realistically they should be thinking of adding a visitor centre, overlooking Glasgow.
Somewhere to serve hot beverages, and also function as a place to hold weddings, bar mitvahs, birthdays, etc.

Consider how such a place could dovetail with your existing lifestyle…

It’s Saturday morning, you’re slightly the worse for wear, so you take the gondola up to the jaw reservoir. You grab a coffee, perhaps some home baking. Then you take a stroll, maybe put in a pb round the ‘humf’
Then it’s back to the function centre at the ‘jaw for another coffee, maybe check your Facebook profile, move some money around.
Plenty of time to get back home, shower and change into your neon socks and brothel creepers to restart the fun at clatty-pats.

You could even call the highest gondola stop on the kilpatricks ‘ cloud-nine’, for all you hep cats out there..

://youtu.be/MhliLCJKZGA

youll be laughing on the other side of your faces when winter kicks in and you can’t get to m&s for dishwasher tabs or fondue, cos the diesels frozen solid in your golf tdi 😆

Try again…

//https://youtu.be/MhliLCJKZGA

Brilliant- you’ve convinced me!

Sign me up.