1,000 road closures and 142-mile diversions: How Scotland’s roads have become a laughing stock

When roadworks are planned, setting up lengthy diversions appears to have become an almost automatic part of the process

If Green activists want society to cut down on car use there is a simple route to doing this. They just need to get jobs with Amey. The road maintenance firm is currently responsible for a 96-mile diversion in south-west Scotland, which takes drivers on a two-and-half-hour magical mystery tour via Ayr to avoid a short stretch of resurfacing on the Galloway coast.

You would literally be quicker to abandon the car and walk to your destination… which is exactly what environmental campaigners want. Instead, what is happening is that people are using local minor roads to avoid the detour, much to the irritation of locals who say the closure is unnecessary and a convoy system could have been used through the roadworks.

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However, more and more, road closures seem to be the preferred option, if even just minor repairs are underway. Last week I followed a diversion off the A701 Beattock to Edinburgh road. The alternative would have been to use the A74 but it was closed at Abington and even if I’d made it to the M8, it was also closed heading for Edinburgh.

Health and safety

At least these closures had diversions in place. A while back I was driving south late at night and the road was shut at Biggar. A single sign indicated we should turn right to reach the motorway so I followed a white van for mile after mile in pitch darkness and driving rain. I remember reaching Carnwath and Carstairs Junction where the van driver stopped to ask me if I had any idea where we were supposed to go. No was the answer but we carried on regardless.

At some stage I think we reached the outskirts of Lanark and perhaps Huddersfield and downtown Detroit before being deposited back on the main road, just south of Biggar where the whole adventure had started. By then, it was all a bit of a blur.

Sometimes road closures are inevitable. For sinkholes or after a serious accident, there is simply no other option. But increasing concern about health and safety also seems to be making it the preferred option when any work is taking place.

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There was outrage when a 96-mile diversion was set up to accommodate roadworks on the A75There was outrage when a 96-mile diversion was set up to accommodate roadworks on the A75
There was outrage when a 96-mile diversion was set up to accommodate roadworks on the A75 | NationalWorld

Common sense required

According to the Scottish Road Works Commissioner, this week alone there were nearly 1,000 road closures taking place. That mounts up to a lot of time and inconvenience taken up by diversions with impacts for local communities.

Back in April, drivers faced a 26-mile diversion just to get from one side of the Perthshire village of Comrie to the other. However that pales in comparison with the 142-mile diversion back in June just so a one-mile section of the Old Military Road in Glenshee could be fixed.

The contractors always say the work is done “in consultation with local stakeholders” – but we all know what that means. They announce it, local people say “don’t be ridiculous” and it goes ahead.

This week’s 96-mile diversion in Galloway made national headlines as an example of where common sense and bureaucracy divide. If being a laughing stock makes the Scottish Road Works Commissioner look again at the issue of when road closures are absolutely necessary then the long detour via Dalmellington and all the way to Girvan won’t at least have been a complete waste of time.

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