HeraldFirstGroup submits planning application for Glasgow depotTransport giant FirstGroup has submitted plans for a new £25m bus depot and west of Scotland headquarters at Cathcart Road on the south side of Glasgow in a bid to raise passenger growth to target levels.
The new four-storey Gushetfaulds depot and headquarters will have space for 450 buses, 150 more than the existing full depot at nearby Larkfield on Victoria Road, which will be demolished and turned into flats if its successor depot gets planning approval.
Gushetfaulds, which was bought from the British Railways Board for £8.7m last August and is scheduled to open in three to four years' time, will also include a repair facility that will sit on the other side of the upcoming M74 motorway extension.
The move comes over five years after FirstGroup sold Larkfield to developer Park Lane for £9m and leased it back, having decided that the dilapidated depot was too small to warrant refurbishing it.
Ronnie Park, FirstGroup Glasgow deputy managing director, said the new depot would create the capacity to achieve FirstGroup's plan to grow passenger numbers at 4% per year for the next 10 years, as agreed with the Strathclyde Partnership for Transport in its stability and growth plan three years ago.
The recession has slashed passenger growth to 2.5% from 3% last year, but FirstGroup expects this to pick up as the city's east end is re-developed for the Commonwealth Games in 2014 and bus cleanliness is improved by the facilities at the new depot.
Park said: "We are going to need between 30 and 40 extra buses per year to achieve our 4% target. We can get some of that capacity by converting single-deck buses to double deck, but eventually we have got to put on extra buses."
Peter O'Connell, senior project manager in the property department, said: "One of the key objectives is to make sure that we are turning out buses that are cleaner and run better on a daily basis.
"We will have very expansive facilities for fuelling and washing the buses every day. This will in turn mean that buses are presented much more favourably to the public, since one of the key issues from the public is the fact that buses can sometimes not be very clean or pleasant."
Larkfield is the largest of FirstGroup's seven depots in Glasgow and the west. The others are at Parkhead, Scots- toun, Overton, Blantyre, Cumbernauld and Dumbarton, and four are already at full capacity.
The Gushetfaulds site, which has lain derelict for 20 years, aims to offer a more welcoming place for passenger visits and to bring Larkfield's 800 staff, depot managers and drivers together in the same building for the first time.
The total employee capacity of the two new buildings will be 1100, the majority of whom will be drivers.
A spokeswoman for FirstGroup said that the long delay between the leaseback and the Gushetfaulds application was because the site was not initially available.
Park Lane has previously said it plans for a £100m development of 10 blocks luxury flats, totalling 640 homes.