Ken Houston: No great loss if transport group hits the buffers

For some of us, however, a more intriguing – and more opportunistic – outcome would be the possibility of the Subway without the Strathclyde Partnership for Transport (SPT).

Half a century ago, Glasgow Corporation boasted ownership of the second- largest municipal bus fleet in the UK, an extensive network of trolley buses and trams, as well as an underground railway.

Its executive comprised a manager and his deputy, whose policy was monitored by a small group of councillors and bailies that formed the corporation's transport committee.

These political representatives probably claimed no more in expenses than the cost of a pint of beer and a sandwich following committee meetings – attendance at which they had to juggle, in many cases, with an eight-hour manual shift.

Fifty years on, SPT, a successor to the municipal transport department, is left with just the underground and a portfolio of bus shelters.

Despite this, it is top heavy in management and its senior officials – both executive and non-executive – have racked up mind-boggling expenses in pursuance of their respective roles.

To compound the situation, those who travelled the world on fact-finding missions rarely had a hope of putting any genuinely new information into practice.

The truth is that Strathclyde Partnership for Transport is a "zombie" quango and has been ever since the Scottish Executive closed its predecessor, Strathclyde Passenger Transport Executive (PTE), placing responsibility for all internal Scottish rail services on the new body, Transport Scotland.

Up until then, Strathclyde PTE had a major part to play in the development of local rail services in Glasgow and the west.

To paraphrase the famous statement made by the lawyer and former US secretary of state Dean Acheson, about Britain in the early 1960s, SPT had "lost an empire and has not yet found a role".

Well, that's not quite true. SPT did find a role – searching the world for transport solutions that it had little or no power to implement.

Even if it did possess that power the purposes of this globe-trotting would still be questionable in the extreme: why visit Delhi, a city with probably more people than Scotland has twice over, or for that matter New York, in search of transport solutions for a relatively small conurbation like Greater Glasgow?

However, even the strategy of its predecessor was also open to question. Launched in 1973, the PTE inherited the former Glasgow Corporation bus fleet but it soon became clear that its main interest was railways, not buses.

The modernisation of the underground apart, its initiatives were all heavy rail schemes, which are good for getting people from A to B but are pretty useless at providing more flexible travel options that provide a real alternative to the private car (i.e. the interchange concept associated with the London Underground or Paris Metro).

It did not show much interest in lighter railway options, which have been the choice of so many European cities of similar size to Glasgow, despite Glasgow boasting operational tunnels below its prime retail pitch and its main business district, both of which could form the backbone of a proper metro system.

One of the PTE's cheaper jaunts was across the border to Newcastle to investigate the Tyne & Wear Metro, which provided a light, high-frequency, flexible rail network (which included a branch to the airport) but it was dismissed as "not appropriate" for Glasgow.

Meanwhile, the PTE showed little stomach for trying to develop – as its statute had required – a co-ordinated network of bus services across the region.

Eventually it sold the bus undertaking and from then on concentrated most of its efforts on the suburban rail system, plus the underground.

As for the latter, its operational record has been less than impressive.

The bizarre incident when passengers were left stranded one evening when management closed three stations because staff were attending a wedding is beyond parody.

More seriously, today's service headway is one train every six minutes – compared to one train every four minutes before closure for modernisation in the 1970s, when the system was operated with rolling stock built when Queen Victoria was alive. Last week, further service cuts at off-peak times were proposed.

One way out of much of the underground's current problems would be automatic manning of trains – relatively simple given that the service involves a never-ending circle without any point work.

However, it just doesn't seem to be in SPT's nature to be thinking outside the box.

Consequently, would it be any great loss to either rail passengers or taxpayers if the Scottish Government bit the bullet, wound up SPT and split its remaining functions among appropriate existing bodies?

I see no reason why Scotland's biggest city should not be its own transport authority once again, which would mean returning ownership of the underground to Glasgow City Council, albeit operated under licence by a private company, to curtail the type of Luddite working practices tolerated by SPT.

In recent years, the city council has successfully "privatised" operation of its theatres and museums (while still retaining ownership), so why not the Subway as well?

Why, it might even lead to the rolling stock being repainted in the attractive red livery associated with Corporation days and displaying the city's name and coat of arms once again.

Apart from bringing back a bit of civic pride, this would also have the distinct advantage of burying for good that naff nickname "Clockwork Orange" with which the system has been lumbered for too long and is an ongoing reminder of PTE/SPT lost opportunities.