Glasgow Subway to run past midnight for first time in its 130-year history

The Glasgow Subway will run until 1am on Friday and Saturday nights from the end of November, the first time the 130-year-old circle line has operated after midnight, after transport chiefs voted on Friday to fund a 12-month trial.

Strathclyde Partnership for Transport (SPT) approved £4.2m for the pilot, which will add 32 trains a week to the 15-station loop. The last trains have left St Enoch at 11.30pm on Saturdays and as early as 6pm on Sundays since the system reopened after modernisation in 1980, a timetable that bar owners, hospital staff and the city’s two universities have lobbied against for decades.

The change has become possible because the £288m fleet of new trains, which replaced the orange 1970s stock last year, needs less overnight attention. “The old trains needed six hours of maintenance access every night and we had to take it when we could,” said Eilidh Baird, the SPT chair. “The new fleet gives us three hours back. We are returning those hours to the people of Glasgow.”

SPT’s own figures suggest about 9,000 passengers a night would use the extra services, rising to 14,000 in December. The subway carried 12.6m passengers in the year to March, still 15% below its pre-pandemic peak, and the authority hopes late-night running will recover some of the lost evening trade. A single fare after 11pm will stay at £1.95 with a smartcard.

Tariq Mahmood, who runs a bar on Byres Road in the west end and chairs the Glasgow Night Time Economy Forum, said the decision was “overdue by about 40 years”. He added: “Every Saturday we watch people leave at 11 because the last train is going. Edinburgh has night buses, Newcastle has the Metro till 1am. We have been the only big city in Britain whose underground shuts before the pubs.”

Staff unions have agreed the new rota after negotiations that secured a 4% unsocial-hours supplement and a guarantee that no employee will work more than two late finishes a fortnight. Gail Prentice, regional organiser for Unite, said members supported the trial “provided the safety staffing is real and not a spreadsheet”, and the deal includes two additional station assistants at Buchanan Street and Hillhead after 11pm.

Police Scotland has asked SPT to install additional CCTV at Kelvinhall and Govan, where officers say late-night disorder is most likely, and the authority will spend £310,000 on cameras and lighting before the trial begins. British Transport Police, which does not cover the subway, will not be involved.

The trial will be reviewed in December 2027. If passenger numbers cover 60% of the running costs, SPT says the late services will become permanent, with Sunday evening running the next target. “The subway was built in 1896 for shipyard workers who started at dawn,” Haddow said. “Glasgow keeps different hours now.”