THE M8 has its problems. Last week it was announced that the Woodside viaduct repairs could last for four years as the stretch has been closed from four lanes to two since last March. Meanwhile, a petition is getting traction in Holyrood to investigate the feasibility of removing and reducing the impact of its central Glasgow stretch altogether.

With indications that the repair project may require 60 pillars to be completely rebuilt, the contractor Amey has said that the complexity and scale of such a viaduct repair is “unprecedented” in Scotland. It may be of no wonder then that people are considering alternatives.

Speaking to BBC Radio’s Good Morning Scotland programme last week, Labour MSP Paul Sweeney (below) said: “Given the scale of reconstruction work required on that section of the motorway, which has long been derided as a scar through the heart of the city of Glasgow, perhaps we ought to take a sanity check here and have a more fundamental assessment of what we should be doing with this major piece of infrastructure.”

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The issues are not limited to the repairs but also how the M8 has ­separated communities and deprived locals of social space. One mitigation design that has been proposed is a roof cap that would seal off parts of the motorway to make the real estate more people-friendly. This would solve some of the smaller problems like sound pollution and access. ­However, due to the differing levels of the M8, this could prove ­impractical over the entirety of the central ­Glasgow stretch.

President of the Glasgow Institute of Architects (GIA), Phil Zoechbauer, said: “The M8 is kind of a dynamic beast in a way and I don’t think there’s a one size fits all solution to dealing with it.

“If you were to cap over it in ­separate areas, you would potentially have to do that where it doesn’t bring benefit. I think there is an element of opportunity there but it probably has limited potential.”

Another issue is that a roof cap would not solve fundamental issues like escalating repair demands and carbon output. This is where ­complete removal comes into the ­discussion.

READ MORE: Call for Glasgow's M8 to be scrapped and turned into people-friendly green zone

Ridding Glasgow of such a vast and deep-rooted piece of ­infrastructure may sound extreme but there are several examples of it working across the world. In 2003, Seoul ­demolished the Cheonggyecheon motorway city, making way for a 6.8 mile ­recreational space. The project was seen as a major achievement of urban regeneration and has become a ­popular tourist attraction. Off the back of its success, the mayor ­responsible, Lee Myung-bak, became President of South Korea.

In 1991, the San Francisco ­Embarcadero Freeway was demolished by an earthquake and sparked a regeneration project described as a “major economic engine for the Bay Area” by the National Trust for ­Historic Preservation.

Commenting, Ian Lockwood, a leading American transport and ­urban planning engineer said: “In San Francisco, there’s more trip-making happening in the downtown area today than when the highway was there. For walking, transit, shopping, culture, tours and work. Just not a lot of long-distance car trips.

“We call it vibrancy when you get lots of trips: The city is much more vibrant, lively, cleaner and more ­attractive.

“Every highway removal has been a huge success for the city. There’s no exceptions. However, on the other end of the ledger, if you look at where highways were ploughed through ­cities, there’s all kinds of problems.”

An advocate for rethinking how cities are best served by their roads and streets, Lockwood believes that mitigation alone cannot fix the ­issues faced by communities cut off by ­motorways and the associated impact on standards of living.

He said: “The entire system’s ­designed to keep the highway ­working, instead of the city ­working, and these changes are all about ­keeping this flawed idea alive. What we really should be doing is making the city better and not trying to just keep the highway working.”

What is clear is that, amid concerns of long-term repairs and community impact, there are options and reasons to be optimistic. Scotland has a long-standing tradition of remarkable feats of engineering and there is always hope that we could continue in that vein of radical problem-solving.

Commenting on the scope for ­opportunity around the M8, ­Zoechbauer said: “I don’t see any ­reason why we shouldn’t be ­ambitious. Glasgow is a phenomenal city for architecture and design. Let’s look at what are the possibilities and what can be gained.”

The petition currently going through Holyrood, which was put forward by Replace the M8, has received 1570 signatures and may well spark further discussion among officials about what Glasgow’s options are.

Replace the M8’s Peter Kelly said: “People engaging with what we’re putting out are looking at this with fresh eyes, realising that ‘oh the ­motorway doesn’t have to be there’.

“It’s not an anti-car obsession, it’s Glasgow being the best version of itself. I think a lot of people are excited by the idea of Glasgow ­repairing itself.”