I was a keen supporter of the epetition to the Scottish Government requesting that the notorious A82 road north of Glasgow be upgraded. Users of the A82 have had to put up with congestion and delays on this essential trunk route for decades from the laughable “temporary” traffic lights at Pulpit Rock that have been there for forty years to the hopelessly overloaded Kilbowie roundabout. Dumbarton is a bottleneck on the road and traffic is regularly at a standstill because of accidents or broken down vehicles and emergency vehicles are often unable to move because of the gridlock.
What a contrast with other countries. I was on holiday in Sicily last week and drove through the mountains in the south east of the island. In that area even quite small towns have got excellent road access often involving huge flyovers or tunnels because of the difficult terrain. It was interesting to note that most of these projects had big signs near them announcing that funding had come from the EU. One wonders why a semi autonomous region like Sicily can get €Bs in EU funding to upgrade their road network whilst in Scotland we have to thole the horrors of the A82 and the dangers of the A9 not to mention the unfinished motorway between Glasgow and Edinburgh. It’s even more galling to see our money being spent in Sicily where half of it ends up in the pocket of the mafia.

Hi Levenax,

I was in Orkney in 98 and there were roads being upgraded there at the time with EU funding. Same thing in the Hebrides. Personally, I think more road building is like throwing money into the sea. The future of transportation is in electrified railways. Oil, having reached peak production, can only get more expensive and uneconomic. Add to that the disastrous environmental effects of the internal combustion engine and it's clear - the days of the personal motor car are over.

I say good riddance. Smelly, nasty, noisy things that they are. I've seen Toronto swell from a city of 1,000,000 to 4,000,000. The number of lanes going into the city has increased from 4 (dual carriage way) to 22 (git me oot ae here).

I remember when there were very few cars in Scotland and the countryside was quiet and peaceful. People took buses, trams, and trains to get around. They tended to live close to where they worked and town centres were alive and bustling. Now we have "Wimpey Estate" dormitory communities where villages used to be, while Tescos have replaced the greengrocer, the butcher, the fishmonger and the baker. Cars made these social changes possible. These changes aren't progress.

I think it's time we rethought car culture - it's demise is inevitable anyway.

Levenax

More appropriate to Scotland, Norway has an excellent road system without EU funding. They seem to have no problem with tunnels, including corkscrew affairs that change levels by hundreds of metres. Why could we not have a tunnel under the Forth? Without any public debate they are going to build another bridge. So we have closures to high sided vehicles extending into the distant future. And the structure will be exposed to the elements, requiring more maintenance.

Scunnert

Appreciate your point. I look forward to a car-free future where the buses can run to time (my bus pass is just weeks away ). I also took the train from Edinburgh to London recently for the first time in 20 years. Now that's the civilised way to travel. It even has a wifi connection.

Levenax wrote:
What a contrast with other countries. I was on holiday in Sicily last week and drove through the mountains in the south east of the island. In that area even quite small towns have got excellent road access often involving huge flyovers or tunnels because of the difficult terrain. It was interesting to note that most of these projects had big signs near them announcing that funding had come from the EU. One wonders why a semi autonomous region like Sicily can get €Bs in EU funding to upgrade their road network whilst in Scotland we have to thole the horrors of the A82 and the dangers of the A9 not to mention the unfinished motorway between Glasgow and Edinburgh. It’s even more galling to see our money being spent in Sicily where half of it ends up in the pocket of the mafia.

I think that is what you call the union dividend.

Meg wrote:
I think that is what you call the union dividend.

Yes of course it is and it's why London has the M25 and we don't even have a complete motorway between our two biggest cities.

DD - I agree that a new bridge over the forth is daft, it should be a tunnel.

Scunnert - I think there are only two ways to run public transport. 1. make it so cheap and efficient that people actively choose to use it or 2. remove subsidies and make the user pay the full cost. Whatever one does there will always be a demand for private transport because it's impossible to provide public transport everywhere and everytime somebody wants it. We will all have to get used to using smaller and more efficient cars.