History
The original M77 was a short 1.5-mile (2.4 km) spur route which took traffic from the M8 motorway in the Kinning Park area of Glasgow, ending at a roundabout on Dumbreck Road close to Bellahouston Park, although prior to this there had been an unused spur running to roughly Ibrox telephone exchange on Gower Street.
A large number of accidents and pollution problems caused in the suburban East Renfrewshire towns of Giffnock and Newton Mearns by commuter traffic and heavy lorries (the A77 is the main route for ferry-bound traffic sailing to Northern Ireland), saw an extension proposed to bypass these areas in the early 1990s. This was fiercely opposed by environmentalists, who set up a road protest camp, [1] as the extension would cut through parts of the historic Pollok Country Park. Approval for the extension was granted and construction went ahead in 1994, opening in December 1996. A threatening visit took place in 1995 to the protesters of 'Pollok Free State' by the Conservative Member of Parliament Allan Stewart (MP for Eastwood, which had the same boundary as East Renfrewshire), accompanied by his son and another teenager wielding airguns. Stewart was fined for a breach of the peace. [2] [3] The controversy contributed to him standing down as MP for Eastwood in the next election in 1997, where the Conservatives lost the seat to Labour.
The latest upgrade was instigated in 2003, and involved extending the M77 a further 9 miles (14 km) south to the village of Fenwick, near Kilmarnock. This replaced the dangerous 4-lane single carriageway of the A77 that dropped to a two lane single carriageway for the bend just north of the very sharp Mearns Road turn-off, and the A77/B764 (Eaglesham) junction (causing vehicles to queue dangerously on the outside lane on a bend to enter the B764 from the south) which were prone to fatal accidents. The scheme also included the Glasgow Southern Orbital (GSO) which bypassed the narrow B764 Eaglesham Moor Road and the town of Clarkston, East Renfrewshire for routes to East Kilbride. This also resulted in the closure of junction 5 on its previous site at Malletsheugh and the creation of a new junction 5 slightly further south at Maidenhill. An old slip road still exists, but is closed. The works were completed in April 2005.
In 2006, junction 2 was rebuilt in conjunction with the building of the adjacent Silverburn Shopping Centre. The northbound off-ramp and southbound on-ramp are now routed via the access roundabout to the shopping centre.
In 2010 a relief lane was constructed between Plantation and Junction 1 southbound. The purpose of this was to ease the congestion that regularly occurs during peak rush hour.
The original segment of the A77 between Newton Mearns and Fenwick that previously carried the traffic now accommodated by the M77 has been converted into a two-lane single carriageway with cycle lanes. The remainder of the road through Newton Mearns has been converted into a two-lane dual carriageway with cycle lanes. The cycle lanes end at Eastwood Toll in Giffnock.
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