B959

The B959 follows part of the old route of the A92 east of Dundee, but has a complicated history.

Route

Arbroath Road, Dundee

The route currently starts by turning right off the A929 at traffic lights. On the western approach, the road is marked 'ARBH' (for Arbroath?) but no other signpost is shown. The B959 heads east along Victoria Street then crosses another arm of the A929 at another set of lights to become Arbroath Road. A block further east, Kemback Street turns to the north. This is shown on some maps as part of a one-way westbound spur of the B959 which then turns left onto Raglan Street and crosses the A929 to Lyon Street back to the original A929. However as the mainline of the B959 has been two-way up to this point (and continues to be so) there is no real need for this spur. Continuing east into the suburbs, Arbroath Road passes Baxter Park and the usual suburban green spaces, before running along a long straight. By the cemetery the unclassified D2 Craigie Avenue turns off right towards the A92 whilst the B959 continues past Aldi to end at the large Scott Fyffe Roundabout where it meets the A92, A972 and B961.

History

The now-unclassified Old Craigie Road

The original route of the B959 formed a sort of northern bypass before the Kingsway was built. It started on the A923 Coupar Angus Road to the northwest of Dundee city centre, and headed east along Dunsinane Avenue before zigzagging onto Clepington Road. It followed this road for some distance, crossing the B960 and A929 en-route before reaching the B961 Pitkerro Road. This was crossed via a short multiplex to the north east before the B959 turned south along Old Craigie Road to end on the A92 Arbroath Road.

As the road is close to the centre of Dundee tracing its history is difficult before larger scale mapping included road numbers. It seems, although it is not certain, that the majority of the road was downgraded following the construction of the A972 Kingsway in the late 1920s; it is certainly no longer marked on the OS Six Inch map from c1947. It appears that the B960 was extended along part of Clepington Road to reach the new Kingsway whereas the only other part of the B959 remaining was Old Craigie Road, which is explicitly described as such on the OS One Inch map. The remainder of the B959 was deemed surplus to requirements as its route had been replaced by the A972.

The B959 in the 1960s

Following the construction of the Tay Road Bridge, the A92 was re-routed and its former route along Arbroath Road became an extension of the B959. This created a T shaped route which is explicitly marked on both the 1967 and 1969 OS One Inch maps and the 1969 OS 1:10,000 sheet. In more recent years Old Craigie Road has also been declassified, and the B959 extended west along Victoria Street, between the two arms of the A929 towards the city centre.

The 1922 MOT Road List defines this route as: Dundee Bye-pass