Qualla: Clyde Arc

Clyde Arc: Introduction

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Thomas Nugent, CC BY-SA 2.0. Walk onto the Clyde Arc from the Finnieston side and you can feel the geometry start to tilt under you. The bridge crosses the River Clyde diagonally, not square to the banks, and the steel arch overhead leans inward across the deck. Glaswegians took one look at this in 2006 and named it the Squinty Bridge, before the official opening could happen. The official name, Clyde Arc, was given at the 18 September 2006 ceremony. Nobody calls it that. The Squinty has become a small piece of vernacular truth about a city that has always been suspicious of pretension.

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Image: Thomas Nugent | CC BY-SA 2.0

Clyde Arc: The First New City Bridge in Thirty-Six Years

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Myriam Thyes, CC BY-SA 3.0. Until the Clyde Arc opened, the most recent city-centre traffic crossing of the Clyde had been the Kingston Bridge, which carried the M8 motorway over the river when it opened in 1970. Thirty-six years later, the Squinty became the second. The bridge was a piece of the broader st...

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Image: Myriam Thyes | CC BY-SA 3.0

Clyde Arc: Engineering on the Diagonal

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Lynn M Reid, CC BY-SA 2.0. The main span is 96 metres of steel arch, with two 36.5-metre end spans bringing the total to 169 metres. Piling work was carried out from a floating barge anchored on the Clyde, while the bridge superstructure was fabricated off-site and floated into place. The supports for the ...

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Image: Lynn M Reid | CC BY-SA 2.0

Clyde Arc: The Night the Hanger Snapped

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Stephen Sweeney, CC BY-SA 2.0. On the night of 14 January 2008, the Squinty went quiet very suddenly. The connecting fork on one of the bridge's fourteen hangers, the cables that transfer the deck's weight up to the arch, broke. Strathclyde Police closed the bridge to traffic before any vehicle was on it durin...

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Image: Stephen Sweeney | CC BY-SA 2.0

Clyde Arc: Squinty Pride

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Skin - ubx from Glasgow, CC BY 2.0. There is a particular Glasgow knack for nicknaming a piece of civic kit so that the official name never quite catches on. Edinburgh has the Athens of the North; Glasgow has the Squinty Bridge, and is happier. The bridge sits in a section of the Clyde that has changed beyond recog...

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Image: Skin - ubx from Glasgow | CC BY 2.0