Killer Roads
ON a calm, wintry morning in January 2002, retired Cumbernauld headmaster Ron Grant set off from his home in Falkirk with his wife Margaret, to spend a few weeks on the Isle of Lewis.
They went by the M9 to Perth and so on to the A9. Ron did nothing wrong. He was not drunk. He was not speeding. He was not overtaking. He was just driving when a white van hurtled round the bend towards him, on the wrong side of the road, and smashed into them like a sledgehammer. Ron was killed instantly. The van driver died the following day.
Margaret, though badly bruised and so badly concussed that she can remember nothing of the accident, made a full recovery. There are other scars no surgeon can mend.
Rons life was one of 80 wasted on this accursed road since 1999. Last year, on that stretch of the A9 alone, between Inverness and Perth, 11 were killed. The basic problem is that it is the arterial route to the northern Highlands, thick with commercial traffic but built on the cheap.
Crucially, some stretches of the A9 are dual-carriageway and other, lengthy stretches are not. On these, overtaking is practically impossible and, despite desperate endeavours to improve signage, a momentary lapse of concentration is all one needs to forget one has just left dual-carriageway for normal highway and so hurtle into eternity against an oncoming truck.
As if that were not bad enough, dozens of communities lie just off the highway and there are no sliproads or roundabouts for their access. Little Miss Grant edges out of the Dalwhinnie T-junction in her Morris Minor in snow, in rain, in mist
as vehicles blast towards her at the speed limit, and worse.
THROW in all the frustrated motorists, stuck through tracts of Perthshire behind a Tesco truck or a caravan and you have an accident just waiting to happen.
The defects of the modern A9 have been obvious since it was upgraded in 1984 and Highlanders have been begging for its further improvement for years.
Meanwhile, the fatal accidents continue and it is difficult to look kindly on this weeks political games at Holyrood that threaten plans to resolve what is literally a matter of life and death.
On Tuesday, the Scottish Executives new Transport Minister, Stewart Stevenson, announced plans finally to dual the entire A9 from Perth to Inverness. The cost is about Pounds 600million. This was a manifesto commitment by the SNP. But the Nationalists also had a manifesto commitment to scrap a widely derided tram scheme for Edinburgh which, by coincidence, is likewise costed at Pounds 600million.
Outwith the poshest, leafiest and most moneyed districts the New Town, the smart apartments by Ocean Terminal many Edinburgh residents think trams an entire waste of time and a recent poll by the local evening paper showed majority opposition.
But no part of Scotland has done better out of devolution than Edinburgh and those who do want trams are singularly articulate, connected and vocal.
Theres the related matter, too, of a new rail link from Edinburgh to the citys airport
an extraordinary scheme requiring a tunnel built under a runway. This also, by astonishing coincidence, is costed at Pounds 600million
and its cancellation was also an SNP manifesto commitment.
Scrapping both Edinburgh plans would not only cover a new and much safer A9 but allow the Executive substantially to improve a scarcely less important road, the A96, from Inverness to Aberdeen, of still more infuriating character.
Opponents insist these road schemes are blatant pandering by the new Nationalist Executive to its political base. It is darkly muttered that, after all, the A9 passes through three SNP seats.
The obvious response is that, barely a decade ago, it ran through three Tory constituencies
from Stirling to North Tayside
and the Tory government of the day did nothing about it.
For that matter, between haulage concerns, the retail trade and the tourist sector and so on, a safe, fast A9 is in the interests of the entire country. It might also be added that squillions of public money have been invested in Edinburgh (not least by the dripping roast of Holyrood itself) and that scrapping these two projects was a plain commitment by the party that won the recent election.
In fact, the SNP got more votes than any other party for these specific policies on the Lothian regional list.
LETS look quickly at the relevant transport issues. Trams are not the stuff of 21st-century transport. They are the toys o f a theme park. We scrapped them half a century ago and tore up the tracks because they were obsolete. They are slow, inflexible, conflict hopelessly with more mobile traffic and the old tracks were a notorious hazard for cyclists.
An electric trolley-bus scheme for Edinburgh would cost far less money and make much more sense. A r a il link to Edinburgh Airport could be adequately provided, at far less expense, simply by providing a suitable new station on the main line to Glasgow Queen Street, which runs very close to the terminal.
In fact, i f Edinburgh has real transport issues
and it has there are other obvious reforms.
Its old suburban railway, still used by goods trains and in good order, could be reopened for quite modest expenditure.
The city could reconsider its ongoing vendetta on private motorists, exemplified by its hilariously styled traffic calming measures, which infuriate at every turn.
But the most evident problem is not the lack of a chintzy tram to someones private decking by Leith docks, but the disgraceful state of the citys links to Glasgow.
There is still no complete motorway between the two cities and the A8/M8 combination is wholly inadequate for peak traffic.
ScotRails shuttle service from Edinburgh to Glasgow Queen Street is also pretty hopeless.
These are far more urgent issues than Auld Reekie tramcars and certainly of wider national interest.
The biggest failure of devolution to date
a Labour failure
was not to achieve anything of importance in our infrastructure of evident benefit to capture Scottish imagination. To coin a phrase, the time is now we have voted for these measures and we are entitled to have them.
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