GLASGOW commuters experienced unusual and severe delays amid heavy road traffic during Wednesday evening’s rush-hour.

It came the day before the city was set to play host to the European Championships, a sporting event that is causing the closure of hundreds of busy routes across the city for up to two weeks.

Major motorways in and out of the city came to a complete standstill at around 5pm as delays affected traffic flow on both sides of the M8.

The M8 eastbound saw massive queues between junctions 29 and 14 and also westbound between junctions 11 and 27, warned Traffic Scotland on Twitter.

The M74 westbound at the M8 merge of junction 2, and M77 southbound at the M8 merge of junction 2 also experienced long delays.

Traffic Scotland’s warning came just minutes after it revealed delays of up to 40 minutes on the M8 westbound at junction 15 Fruitmarket - with congestion back to junction 12 - due to road traffic accident.

Emergency services and the Trunk Road Incident Support Service (TRISS) were on the scene.

Traffic Scotland said in a tweet to its followers: “Glasgow is NOT looking pretty on the map this evening.

“Stop-start traffic everywhere.”

Traffic Scotland later updated its followers at 6.30pm that the flow remained slow both ways on the M8.

Another road traffic accident caused delays at 7pm on the M8 westbound at junctions 2 and 3 which saw emergency services and TRISS rush to the scene.

The incident was cleared up 15 minutes later.

Radio host and travel presenter Amber Zoe told her Twitter followers it was “crazy busy,” adding: “It’s a really busy one tonight.”

When a follower described the traffic as a “complete disaster,” Amber responded: “It’s the knock-on effect of the M8 traffic. We have an hour’s queue both ways, so it’s just spread onto surrounding roads. It also doesn’t help that we have closures for the European Championships in town too.

“There has been an hour’s delay from St James [Interchange] to Towhead at the Royal Infirmary because of an accident on the other side, and because of people slowing down to look. Apart from that, no incidents, but very busy.”

She later wrote: “WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO GLASGOW? If you’ve been stuck tonight, you deserve a medal.”

Traffic Scotland warned that traffic to and from Glasgow would be heavier than normal on trunk routes and local roads around venues as the European Championships get underway from August 2 to 12.

The trunk road management service urged: “Public transport is advised.”