After the A9 & A96

[rileyrob]

Where I live, one of my gripes is access to Crianlarich and thence to the north-west of Scotland. The two routes to Crianlarich are round Glasgow and up the A82 or to Stirling and then up the A85. But I can't see any way of improving either route.

The A82 along Loch Lomond is due to be improved in the next 10-15 years, although it doesn't look like its going to be a (current) A9 type upgrade, rather an online upgrade with widening and bend easing.

I don't think that improving the A84 route is insurmountable either. I think that re-routing it along an improved A873-B822-A81 route would bypass Doune and Callendar, with a connection to the current route at Kilmahog. The Pass of Leny is always going to be a problem, but the horse-shore bend at the bottom of Loch Lubnaig could be straightened with a causewayed section. It would then just be a matter of filling in as many of the gaps along Loch Lubnaig as possible - there are several sections of good road punctuated with nasty twisty bits, not least the two bad bends at the top end of the loch. However, if Loch Lomond can be fixed, so can this!
Strathyre would be tricky to bypass, as would Lochearnhead in it's entirity, although moving the road a little to the east and providing a service road for the properties and a roundabout for the A85 would improve things a little.

This would just leave the A85 over Glen Ogle and the two narrow bits through Glen Dochart to sort, although these are hardly big budget solutions. Glen Ogle could be trickier, as the road climbs steeply up a narrow ledge on the hillside, and could require some substantial retaining structures to prevent a Rest & Be Thankful situation - a landslide closed the railway on the other side of the glen.

[Halmyre]

I don't think filling in bits of Loch Lubnaig will go down too well, but it's no worse than my plans for a new road by-passing Doune and Callander, through the Trossachs, round the north shore of Loch Katrine and a tunnel from Glen Gyle to Inverarnan.

[Euan]

I don't think filling in bits of Loch Lubnaig will go down too well, but it's no worse than my plans for a new road by-passing Doune and Callander, through the Trossachs, round the north shore of Loch Katrine and a tunnel from Glen Gyle to Inverarnan.

Agreed. Having done a bit of walking in the area, I am very much aware of how rough, steep and challenging the terrain is towards the north end of Loch Lomond. It would be highly technical and overly expensive to build a road through the area, so it would probably be best just to look at improving the A84 and the A82 instead, where possible.

[rileyrob]

Just to be absolutely clear, I am talking about removing this bend which is not exactly on the loch itself, more the river. I reckon that you could iron out the worst of the bend with minimal impact on the main river channel, just by filling in the boggy pool to the side.

This Bend at the other end of the loch could be a lot more challenging however. When driving you get the feeling you are up against a rock face, although on GSV it doesn't look quite so bad behind the vegetation. It would need road closures however to blast a new piece of road through.

We are straying towards fantasy here I fear

[Gav]

Trouble with the A1 is that folks will cut cross country from Newcastle to Edinburgh, or swing over and take the A74 instead of the A1. Sort out the A1 and it will draw traffic. Remember the A1 has been improved from Leeds to Newcastle

[Norfolktolancashire]

Trouble with the A1 is that folks will cut cross country from Newcastle to Edinburgh, or swing over and take the A74 instead of the A1. Sort out the A1 and it will draw traffic. Remember the A1 has been improved from Leeds to Newcastle

Completing the A1 to D2 between Newcastle and Edinburgh would take a lot of the HGV traffic currently using the A66 across the tops. It would attract lots of long distance traffic, whether that is good for the Northumbrian AONB?

It would be the only cross border route relatively safe from the winter weather/snow as the others including the M74 cross high ground.

[owen b]

Completing the A1 to D2 between Newcastle and Edinburgh would take a lot of the HGV traffic currently using the A66 across the tops. It would attract lots of long distance traffic, whether that is good for the Northumbrian AONB?

Would it? Scotch Corner to Perth is virtually equidistant via Penrith/Glasgow/Stirling or Newcastle/Edinburgh. If both the A66 and A1 got dualled, I suspect most traffic for Glasgow, Perth, Dundee, Aberdeen and points north would still take the A66, as the east coast route would still have congestion problems around Edinburgh and Newcastle. Edinburgh, Lothian and Fife traffic would take the A1, but no doubt most of it does already.

I still think that the Scotch Corner - Penrith route is far more strategically important than Morpeth - Dunbar and more in need of an upgrade, and with much less mileage to upgrade, cheaper and better value too.

[Halmyre]

Completing the A1 to D2 between Newcastle and Edinburgh would take a lot of the HGV traffic currently using the A66 across the tops. It would attract lots of long distance traffic, whether that is good for the Northumbrian AONB?

Would it? Scotch Corner to Perth is virtually equidistant via Penrith/Glasgow/Stirling or Newcastle/Edinburgh. If both the A66 and A1 got dualled, I suspect most traffic for Glasgow, Perth, Dundee, Aberdeen and points north would still take the A66, as the east coast route would still have congestion problems around Edinburgh and Newcastle. Edinburgh, Lothian and Fife traffic would take the A1, but no doubt most of it does already.

I still think that the Scotch Corner - Penrith route is far more strategically important than Morpeth - Dunbar and more in need of an upgrade, and with much less mileage to upgrade, cheaper and better value too.

Yes, it would take a momentary lapse of reason to consider any route south that takes me round the A720, and I don't think a new roundabout at Sherrifhall is going to wholly improve matters. As a recent convert to caravanning, I point-blank refuse to go for a weekend break anywhere in the Borders or East Lothian if it involves a Friday afternoon/early-evening journey round Edinburgh.

[Hagbard]

1) Finish the A801. It must be at least 30 years since the rest of it was built.
2) Dundee northern bypass.
3) Improve access to the M74 from southern Scotland. This road does its job of connecting Glasgow to England but is of no use to any of the towns in the south, apart from those like Lockerbie which are actually on the road. A replaced or upgraded A709 from Dumfries to Lockerbie gives Doonhamers faster access via the M74 in both directions, and saves on improving the A75 and A701. A new road from the A721 round Lanark to the M74 gives easier access to Glasgow from Peeblesshire and Lanark.
4) A7 Langholm bypass. This would probably need a tunnel.
5) Extend Borders railway to Hawick. If this is rejected build A7 Selkirk bypass.
8) Permanent fix for A83 at Rest and be Thankful.
9) A82 improvements

[Berk]

But you would then be asking for the Lockerbie junction to be made full-access - which it hasn’t been since it was converted.

So again, you’d be asking was a D3M motorway the right choice??

[KeithW]

Completing the A1 to D2 between Newcastle and Edinburgh would take a lot of the HGV traffic currently using the A66 across the tops. It would attract lots of long distance traffic, whether that is good for the Northumbrian AONB?

Would it? Scotch Corner to Perth is virtually equidistant via Penrith/Glasgow/Stirling or Newcastle/Edinburgh. If both the A66 and A1 got dualled, I suspect most traffic for Glasgow, Perth, Dundee, Aberdeen and points north would still take the A66, as the east coast route would still have congestion problems around Edinburgh and Newcastle. Edinburgh, Lothian and Fife traffic would take the A1, but no doubt most of it does already.

I still think that the Scotch Corner - Penrith route is far more strategically important than Morpeth - Dunbar and more in need of an upgrade, and with much less mileage to upgrade, cheaper and better value too.

The A66 also attracts a fair bit of traffic heading to Stranraer for the ferry to NI as well as tourist traffic to the Northern Lake District and Galloway. The A66 carries about as as much traffic as the A1 at Alnwick with a higher percentage of HGV's. By the time you get to Eyemouth traffic is down to the 10k level. Past Dunbar the A1 starts to become a commuter road and traffic levels soar. In reality the real bottleneck using the A1 is the A720 traffic congestion before reaching the Forth Crossing and M8/M9.

Driving from Cambridge to Perth and Inverness the A66/M66/M74/M80 route was quicker than the A1 and a lot less hassle. I took the hassle anyway of course just to use the A68 but I did come back the fast way.

[djw1981]

As stated in item 2 of Altnabreac's post midway down the previous page, it would have been a grade separated dual carriageway from M74 J12 to M8 J4, thus providing a route from Carlisle to Edinburgh, east central Scotland, the FRB and Fife.

There were rumours it would have been a motorway and known as M7. (At the time it was planned it was still official policy that the A74(M) and M74 would become M6 on completion.)

Thanks, the crucial details were missing. Not that unlike the A702 proposals, then ??

Yes effectively Fastlink (known as M6-M8 Fastlink in the 90s and called M74-M8 Fastlink by me) is an alternative to dualling or upgrading the A702.

The advantages of Fastlink over the A702 corridor are:

• Shorter distance (and thus cheaper) circa 25 miles rather than 35-40 miles);
• Better connection to Fife / Dundee / Aberdeen from the south without overloading City bypass;
• Better connection to Falkirk / Grangemouth via the A801;
• Improved cross border connections from South Lanarkshire and West Lothian;
• Less environmentally sensitive route than A702, dualling in the Pentland Hills regional park would be difficult to achieve;
• Relatively cheap land uses etc on the proposed route.

Advantages of the A702 corridor are:

• Slightly shorter route from Abington to Central Edinburgh 40 miles vs 50 miles via Fastlink;
• Even more distance saving for East Edinburgh / Midlothian / East Lothian.

Overall Fastlink definitely seems the better value proposal. Would probably need to be complemented by A801 Avon Gorge upgrade and M8 J4-J2 upgrade to 3 lanes.

I think that the issues with the fastlink proposal into M8 J4 are:
1) you need to create a new corridor cross country from Abington up past Carwath/Forth and then between Breich and Addiewell. The envieonmental sensitivity of A702 route could be an issue, but given the relatively generous verges through the Regional Park and wide valley floor, it need not be such an issue.
2) you are indeed offloading the westbound A720 (Lothianburn to Hermiston/Gogar) of the Fife / West Lothian / central Scotland traffic, but you are loading the Eastbound M8/A720 with the East / Midlothian traffic, especially as I suspect that councils would seek to use the new route as a method to regulate traffic flow through A702 villages more.
3) as above, A fastlink running into an upgraded A801 dualed through to M9 J4 would be the best solution for that problem, but I think it would also need to be accompanied by a widening of M8 (D3M or ALR) J3-1 and the much described improvements to hermiston gait and eastbound A720, especially the uphill section from Hermiston to Dreghorn.

[Nwallace]

Beyond Hawick it has worse economics than many other rail reopening schemes that have been proposed. It would be very slow for end-to-end traffic and there's miles of no population.

One of the strands of investigation is whether to go to Carlisle or Newcastle; taking population centres along the way that could be connected then Newcastle wins hands down.
To Newcastle from Tweedbank (Melrose): Newton St Boswells, Kelso, Coldstream, Wooler, Alnwich joining the ECML at Alnmouth
To Carlisle: Newton St Boswells, Jedburgh, Hawick, Newcastleton (possibly too small to put a station in, then again Stow (for Lauder?)), Carlisle

I'm not sure how it was calculated, but wasn't Hawick at one point the "largest town farthest from a train station" in potentially the whole of Britain? Certainly in Scotland it would have been.

Only if Lerwick to Bergen is considered a suitable rail link...

Hawick to Tweedbank is 17.6 miles

[B9127]

I get reopening from Tweedbank to Hawick short term but Hawick to Carlisle is open country and would really be on a long term strategic option - unless
you reintroduce Motorail for cars or use the track bed for the M7

[Euan]

1) Finish the A801. It must be at least 30 years since the rest of it was built.
2) Dundee northern bypass.
3) Improve access to the M74 from southern Scotland. This road does its job of connecting Glasgow to England but is of no use to any of the towns in the south, apart from those like Lockerbie which are actually on the road. A replaced or upgraded A709 from Dumfries to Lockerbie gives Doonhamers faster access via the M74 in both directions, and saves on improving the A75 and A701. A new road from the A721 round Lanark to the M74 gives easier access to Glasgow from Peeblesshire and Lanark.
4) A7 Langholm bypass. This would probably need a tunnel.
5) Extend Borders railway to Hawick. If this is rejected build A7 Selkirk bypass.
8) Permanent fix for A83 at Rest and be Thankful.
9) A82 improvements

Upgrading the A709 to dual carriageway has been on and off the agenda for quite a long time, but it hasn't been seriously considered at all since around 2006. What would also be useful if the A709 improvement scheme ever came back into the spotlight would be look at building another link road east of the A74(M) to the A7. Towns such as Langholm and Hawick currently have very limited road access to Glasgow and much of the western side of the Central Belt. The road wouldn't necessarily have to be dual carriageway like the proposed Dumfries - A74(M) link, just as long as it is better and safer than roads like the A708 and the B7068.

[Euan]

I think that the issues with the fastlink proposal into M8 J4 are:
1) you need to create a new corridor cross country from Abington up past Carwath/Forth and then between Breich and Addiewell. The envieonmental sensitivity of A702 route could be an issue, but given the relatively generous verges through the Regional Park and wide valley floor, it need not be such an issue.
2) you are indeed offloading the westbound A720 (Lothianburn to Hermiston/Gogar) of the Fife / West Lothian / central Scotland traffic, but you are loading the Eastbound M8/A720 with the East / Midlothian traffic, especially as I suspect that councils would seek to use the new route as a method to regulate traffic flow through A702 villages more.
3) as above, A fastlink running into an upgraded A801 dualed through to M9 J4 would be the best solution for that problem, but I think it would also need to be accompanied by a widening of M8 (D3M or ALR) J3-1 and the much described improvements to hermiston gait and eastbound A720, especially the uphill section from Hermiston to Dreghorn.

I don't think a new road corridor would cause too many problems as it has been done many times before, like on the Aberdeen bypass for instance. Also, much of the dualled A96 is planned to be entirely offline where at times it will deviate quite some distance away from the old road. The fastlink proposal would essentially follow a similar idea being applied primarily to the A706 and the A70 (A73 as well depending on whether the route would start on J12 or J13 of the M74). Indeed the width of the M8 may need to be reviewed if the fastlink was ever built, especially the section between Hermiston and Ratho which already takes most of the M8/M9/M90 traffic as it all merges together. However, I think it would be far more capable of being able to cope with the extra traffic flow than the A720 would be along any stretch of its length.

[KeithW]

I get reopening from Tweedbank to Hawick short term but Hawick to Carlisle is open country and would really be on a long term strategic option - unless
you reintroduce Motorail for cars or use the track bed for the M7

Hawick to Carlisle is open country in the sense that hardly anybody lives along its route but the terrain and route are really not conducive to high speed running. In LNER days the express trains were hauled by A3 Pacific engines that would normally be running at 80 mph but the tight curves meant that maximum speed anywhere along the route was 70 mph and at locations approaching Whitrope summit speeds would be down to 30 mph. Average running times between Carlisle and Hawick were around 1.5 hours. Simply restoring the track to running order is estimated to cost at least £650 million, throw in the locomotives, rolling stock, signalling and stations and you are looking at spending a billion pounds on a railway with little prospect of anything but light traffic. It would be no faster than the bus which runs every hour and takes 1 hour 20 minutes. This service is faster and more frequent than the train used to be. Motorail is a dead duck I am afraid

The trackbed would hardly be suitable for an M7, you would have to do some expensive widening just to run a slow S2 road through. It would make far more sense to improve the A7 than to throw money at a the Hawick to Carlisle line. It doesnt need to be a motorway or even a full D2, ideally bpass settlements such as Langolm, or at the least replace the single lane bridges and make the rest wide S2 with stretches of D2 for overtaking

[Euan]

I'm not sure how it was calculated, but wasn't Hawick at one point the "largest town farthest from a train station" in potentially the whole of Britain? Certainly in Scotland it would have been.

Only if Lerwick to Bergen is considered a suitable rail link...

Hawick to Tweedbank is 17.6 miles

Hawick was about 40 miles away from any other railway station before the partial restoration of the Borders Railway, so its reputation as a railway deprived town has changed somewhat.

Lerwick is closer to Thurso (137 miles) than it is to Bergen (223 miles), as the crow flies. So Thurso is the nearest railway station to Lerwick.

[FtoE]

I think that the issues with the fastlink proposal into M8 J4 are:
1) you need to create a new corridor cross country from Abington up past Carwath/Forth and then between Breich and Addiewell. The envieonmental sensitivity of A702 route could be an issue, but given the relatively generous verges through the Regional Park and wide valley floor, it need not be such an issue.
2) you are indeed offloading the westbound A720 (Lothianburn to Hermiston/Gogar) of the Fife / West Lothian / central Scotland traffic, but you are loading the Eastbound M8/A720 with the East / Midlothian traffic, especially as I suspect that councils would seek to use the new route as a method to regulate traffic flow through A702 villages more.
3) as above, A fastlink running into an upgraded A801 dualed through to M9 J4 would be the best solution for that problem, but I think it would also need to be accompanied by a widening of M8 (D3M or ALR) J3-1 and the much described improvements to hermiston gait and eastbound A720, especially the uphill section from Hermiston to Dreghorn.

I don't think a new road corridor would cause too many problems as it has been done many times before, like on the Aberdeen bypass for instance. Also, much of the dualled A96 is planned to be entirely offline where at times it will deviate quite some distance away from the old road. The fastlink proposal would essentially follow a similar idea being applied primarily to the A706 and the A70 (A73 as well depending on whether the route would start on J12 or J13 of the M74). Indeed the width of the M8 may need to be reviewed if the fastlink was ever built, especially the section between Hermiston and Ratho which already takes most of the M8/M9/M90 traffic as it all merges together. However, I think it would be far more capable of being able to cope with the extra traffic flow than the A720 would be along any stretch of its length.

The Newbridge to Hermiston section of the M8 was engineered to allow fairly straightforward conversion to D3M (bridges etc) when first built. I’d say that time has come.
I can understand the reluctance to allow more traffic into central Edinburgh but the peripheral roads really are toiling.

[orudge]

Lerwick is closer to Thurso (137 miles) than it is to Bergen (223 miles), as the crow flies. So Thurso is the nearest railway station to Lerwick.

And in terms of connections to the actual railway from Lerwick, the ferry to Aberdeen stops right outside the railway station, and Aberdeen Airport is a short bus ride away from Dyce station, and a slightly longer but possibly more frequent bus ride away from Aberdeen railway station.