PE1610/HH Upgrade the A75
The southern section of the A77 Trunk Road closely follows the route it did in 1776, so basically an old droving track. Certainly not fit for modern traffic requirements and in desperate need of upgrade or replacement.
This modernisation is desperately needed and brought up to a properly engineered standard, fit for current traffic volumes and projected growth over the coming years. Research done for the Strategic Transport Projects Review 2 (STPR2), highlighted how far behind the required standard the current A77 actually is. In the week commencing Tuesday 24th August there were 2 fatalities and 2 casualties between the A77 and the A714 diversionary route causing the south west corner of Scotland being totally cut off to traffic to the North.
It has the worst average journey time for any trunk road in Scotland and to cover the 42 miles between Cairnryan and Ayr takes an average time of 69 minutes, much of it through towns and villages with speed limits of 20, 30 and 40mph. The average speed is 37mph which is not helped by platooning ferry traffic, agriculture vehicles and the twisting, turning nature of the road and few safe dedicated overtaking lanes.
The various small communities the current road passes through are part of the historic fabric of the nation and residents suffer the indignity of high volumes of traffic passing close to their homes, rocking their very foundations! These towns and villages are subjected to high levels of carbon emissions and desperately need bypassed to reduce the levels of emissions which would be in line with the Scottish Government’s Climate Change Agenda thereby, improving the health and wellbeing of the communities living alongside these trunk roads. They deserve better, as do the users of the road, and the route needs to be realigned to bypass all such areas.
If the Scottish Government is interested in making a fairer Scotland for all it needs policies that allow for infrastructure investment and boosting the economy, it needs to upgrade the trunk roads in the South West corner of Scotland and the A77 in particular.
Promises have been made in the past by senior politicians that the A77 and A75 will be upgraded and improved. Given that these have yet to be fulfilled, the South West cannot be allowed to be neglected in this way any longer. Since November 2014 the A77 South of Girvan has been subjected to the carriageway being reduced to single lane with traffic management in place, primarily brought about because of serious landslides, the current one being at Carlock Wall at Glenapp. This has already led to a huge inconvenience, time lost on this arterial route to central Scotland and beyond, this level of disruption has lasted for more than 2500 days and is ever increasing!
Investment in the South West would be an opportunity to provide more functionality to the A77, to build in safe routes for cyclists, adjusting route topography to minimise energy consumption in all types of vehicles for efficiency thereto addressing the ‘Green agenda’.
During the last parliament, there had been talk about having a roundtable meeting with the committee coming out of Edinburgh to Stranraer to conduct such an event, it would be good if the Citizen Participation and Petitions Committee fulfilled its commitment that would give members the opportunity to find out the facts first hand.