NC500 Road Surface

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Leaferclove
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Re: NC500 Road Surface

Post by Leaferclove »

the cheesecake man wrote: Wed Jun 15, 2022 20:41 Or is all this already dealt with in the government's distribution of taxes to councils?
Exactly.

Or, it would be, but society as whole seems to labour under the illusion that council funds are the same as they've always been whereas the real cost of the last decade of 'austerity' is the erosion of central government contributions to council budgets. So instead, our councillors are reduced to scrabbling around for every last penny. They charge you an extra £40 a year to collect your garden waste on top of the council tax that rose as much as they're legally allowed to increase it by, all to provide a bare minimum of services. Then send you newsletters every three months explaining why the social care budget won't cover everything and the travelling library service has had to close.

We're good at complaining about things, and on here there are plenty of complaints about substandard junction designs, lack of skilled staff in the right positions, etc., but I bet there'd be less to complain about if the councils and authorities had a bit more cash to help make ends meet. If budgets have to be cut, you can be sure it'll be the roads before something fundamental like social care. And in an area like the Highlands where everything costs more to provide for remote, rural communities, it's hardly surprising that resurfacing isn't very frequent.
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Re: NC500 Road Surface

Post by jabbaboy »

Must say I disagree strongly with tourist taxes being charged to resurface roads. I understand the sentiments of the argument here but this should be funded by council tax / central funding as other's have said.

All it will lead to is London having more money whereas councils like County Durham, near me, being even more skint which is also very sparse similar to the Highlands but doesn't have any tourism to top up it's budget. It would have even bigger problems when it comes to cities, Edinburgh vs Glasgow being a prime one when Glasgow arguably needs more money badly especially with it's drug issues.

It's totally backwards. Now if that tourism funding was spent on public toilets, car parks for the tourists, some tourist attractions etc. Then that's fair play but it shouldn't be topping up the council services budget.
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Re: NC500 Road Surface

Post by KeithW »

the cheesecake man wrote: Wed Jun 15, 2022 20:41
:soapbox: Can of worms ahoy!

I often visit the Peak District, using roads etc that residents pay to maintain and I do not.

So it is not unreasonable to suggest I should pay some form of tourist tax to contribute?

But
I may well be paying the relevant council or National Park Authority handsomely to use their car park.
I will probably spend some money in local shops or other businesses, which are paying VAT/rates/national insurance/insurance premium tax/corporation tax/other taxes, many of which would not survive hence not pay those taxes without visitors from Sheffield, Manchester, Burton on Trent etc.
So do I really owe any more? Would residents really be better off without tourists? And why the focus on tourists? I am working in Morley this week so the wear and tear I am causing to roads maintained by Leeds City Council is no different (actually it's more because I have two passengers and heavy luggage), so why shouldn't I have to pay for that instead of Owain having to pay for it?

If the tax applies to overnight visitors only, why should they have to pay but not day visitors?

Also many Derbyshire residents visit Sheffield, Manchester etc for shopping, work, cinemas etc, using roads that I am paying to maintain. Should they not also pay a tax to reimburse me?

Or is all this already dealt with in the government's distribution of taxes to councils?

Well now road maintenance is the responsibility of the Highland Council so any tourist tax would presumably have to apply to the Norther Highlands which is just of well as there really aren't that many hotels on or near the NC500, if you include campsites , B&B's , Holiday Cottages etc you would increase the take but the season up there is not long and I really do wonder how much that would raise when you figure in the costs of collection. At the very least you would have to include Inverness to make it pay. Realistically I suspect at a minimum it would apply to Northern Highlands

I dug a little deeper into the income received by Highland Council and found this.
Our revenue budget for 2020 to 2021 is £633 million. This is met by grants from the Scottish Government, Non-Domestic Rate income and Council Tax income. The amount to be met by the Council Tax is £144 million. Band D for 2020/21 in Highland is £1,332.33, a 4.84% increase on 2019/20.
The actual repair work is apparently managed by Transport Scotland
A little more digging provided some numbershttps://www.hie.co.uk/media/3037/nc500plusecono ... us2017.pdf

Number of visitors recorded in total on NC500 98,842 - lets say 100,000 in total assuming that each visitor is there 4 days and is charged £2 per night that would raise around £800,000 - lets be generous and call it a million

Realistically to make difference I suspect it would have to applied not to just the Northern Highlands but to Skye/Kyle of Lohcalsh, Inverness, Aviemore and Fort William.

These are the number I got from Visit Scotland for 2019
The Highlands attracted 17% of all overnight trips and 13% of the total overnight tourism expenditure in Scotland. At 2.9 million, the number of overnight visits was 30% higher than in 2018.
It looks as if anything promoting areas such as the NC500 has worked quite well but the question is do you want to apply taxes to every hotel , B&B etc in the Highlands to raise revenue to maintain the roads that make up the NC500

The next piece of information needed is how much the NC500 costs, fortunately some sent in a FOI request and the only separate cost they could identify was that for the signs which amounted to £80,000. It turns out that most of the damage to the roads is down to potholes and obviously occurs in winter due to frost heave. In 2020 of course very few visitors arrived but the winter weather still damaged roads.

https://www.scotsman.com/news/transport ... on-3180908
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Re: NC500 Road Surface

Post by Ruperts Trooper »

I'm not convinced that a Tourist Tax is a solution - the fact is that tourists do increase costs for local authorities but they also increase turnover/profitability for local businesses and increase jobs for local people which both generate increased taxation income. It's up to the national government, in this case the Scottish Parliament, to determine where to spend their income.
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Re: NC500 Road Surface

Post by Owain »

the cheesecake man wrote: Wed Jun 15, 2022 20:41
So do I really owe any more? Would residents really be better off without tourists? And why the focus on tourists? I am working in Morley this week so the wear and tear I am causing to roads maintained by Leeds City Council is no different (actually it's more because I have two passengers and heavy luggage), so why shouldn't I have to pay for that instead of Owain having to pay for it?

If the tax applies to overnight visitors only, why should they have to pay but not day visitors?
I don't think the appalling state of the roads around here is your fault - they were already dreadful before you came. And it certainly isn't my fault because I am paying for them, probably much more than I actually use them! I understand that Leeds City Council was on the verge of bankruptcy during the pandemic, which I assume was down to nobody parking in the Woodhouse Lane car park...

I'm curious to know how a tax on the NC500 would be levied?

If you go to pretty much any Italian city, a levy of €1/€2 per night will be added to your hotel bill. But if you're doing the NC500 by tent or camper van, or if you're like me and would attempt to drive it all in one day(!), how are they going to make sure you pay?

My neighbour and his fiancée did the NC500 last year with their dachshund by driving a Honda SUV with a kind of tent roof box, meaning that they slept on the roof of their car each night. They spent a whole week up there, with a pretty heavy car, and I don't know how a tax would work with that kind of traveller.

Pay & Display car parking charges won't cut it, because there must be a million places where you can just pull off the road and park up there. Even if signage were put up to deter this kind of activity, 500 miles of wilderness would make enforcement rather difficult, and probably more costly than it'd be worth.
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Re: NC500 Road Surface

Post by KeithW »

Ruperts Trooper wrote: Fri Jun 17, 2022 21:22 I'm not convinced that a Tourist Tax is a solution - the fact is that tourists do increase costs for local authorities but they also increase turnover/profitability for local businesses and increase jobs for local people which both generate increased taxation income. It's up to the national government, in this case the Scottish Parliament, to determine where to spend their income.
However I think a decrease in tourist numbers would be be a problem , clearly they bring a substantial amount of money creating jobs and employment for local residents. Now if you get high visitor numbers all year round it may be an option but the reality is the concern by the locals about the NC500 is that the poor road conditions might REDUCE the number of visitors, clearly the theory that its tourists destroying the roads is nonsense. As a resident of a village in the North East of England I can tell you every spring brings a fresh crop of potholes. No tourists are involved. We do however get a lot of visitors as this was Captain Cooks birthplace.
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Re: NC500 Road Surface

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Ruperts Trooper wrote: Thu Jun 09, 2022 12:18
It's difficult to charge Tourist Tax when they're wild camping, as many do nowadays - indeed they contribute little to the local economy, stocking up on food and drink at supermarkets further south and most of the fuel they buy goes straight to Westminster as taxation.
I suspect that you are guessing here, rather than basing your comment on a knowledge of how people actually use motorhomes.

Speaking as a motorhome owner myself, it would be most unusual for me (or any other motorhomer I know) to spend a whole week wild camping. I would expect to stop at a campsite at least every other day in order to fill up on water, empty the toilet, wastebin and waste water, and to have a night with mains electricity. It would be most unusual to go two nights on the trot wild camping. The whole point of motorhoming is that you don't need to work to a fixed schedule - you drive for a day, stopping wherever takes your fancy, and at some point in the day you decide where you would like to stop for the night, knowing that wild camping is always an option if you can't find anywhere with facilities.

UK-built motorhomes tend to come with pretty small fridges, making it awkward to purchase a whole week's worth of groceries before setting off.
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Re: NC500 Road Surface

Post by Ruperts Trooper »

Graham wrote: Sat Jun 18, 2022 16:06
Ruperts Trooper wrote: Thu Jun 09, 2022 12:18
It's difficult to charge Tourist Tax when they're wild camping, as many do nowadays - indeed they contribute little to the local economy, stocking up on food and drink at supermarkets further south and most of the fuel they buy goes straight to Westminster as taxation.
I suspect that you are guessing here, rather than basing your comment on a knowledge of how people actually use motorhomes.

Speaking as a motorhome owner myself, it would be most unusual for me (or any other motorhomer I know) to spend a whole week wild camping. I would expect to stop at a campsite at least every other day in order to fill up on water, empty the toilet, wastebin and waste water, and to have a night with mains electricity. It would be most unusual to go two nights on the trot wild camping. The whole point of motorhoming is that you don't need to work to a fixed schedule - you drive for a day, stopping wherever takes your fancy, and at some point in the day you decide where you would like to stop for the night, knowing that wild camping is always an option if you can't find anywhere with facilities.

UK-built motorhomes tend to come with pretty small fridges, making it awkward to purchase a whole week's worth of groceries before setting off.
I've no direct knowledge of motorhoming, I'm a caravanner - I know we can go 5 days without shopping using just the standard fridge with non-perishable food lasting the whole trip so I assume motorhomers can too - I based my comment on observations on our Scottish tour including most of NC500 in May 2021 as lockdown ended - in my view, the rental motorhomes have become "the problem" on NC500.
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Re: NC500 Road Surface

Post by Starling »

If you go out to Shetland, Orkney or the Western Isle you will find roads in much better condition than on the NC500.

To deal with the problems or rurality the Shetland, Orkney or the Western Isle councils get much more money per head of population than other councils, about £3500 per head per year. But the Highland Council doesn't, it only gets the Scottish average at about £1k per head per year, and people say most of that gets spend around Inverness.

The Highland Council gets a lot less money than those 3 island councils (per head) but gets far more tourist traffic than those 3 councils put together.

VAT can't really be counted as a local tourist tax because there is no mechanism that links the VAT raised from tourist spending to how much money a local authority gets to spend on roads. I guess it would be a tourist tax if VAT from the tourism industry went directly to local authorities.

Caravans and motorhomes are viewed very negatively by many people who live in rural areas, they don't bring many benefits to the rural areas but they do bring a lot of problems.
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Re: NC500 Road Surface

Post by Ruperts Trooper »

Starling wrote: Sat Jun 18, 2022 20:40 If you go out to Shetland, Orkney or the Western Isle you will find roads in much better condition than on the NC500.

To deal with the problems or rurality the Shetland, Orkney or the Western Isle councils get much more money per head of population than other councils, about £3500 per head per year. But the Highland Council doesn't, it only gets the Scottish average at about £1k per head per year, and people say most of that gets spend around Inverness.

The Highland Council gets a lot less money than those 3 island councils (per head) but gets far more tourist traffic than those 3 councils put together.

VAT can't really be counted as a local tourist tax because there is no mechanism that links the VAT raised from tourist spending to how much money a local authority gets to spend on roads. I guess it would be a tourist tax if VAT from the tourism industry went directly to local authorities.

Caravans and motorhomes are viewed very negatively by many people who live in rural areas, they don't bring many benefits to the rural areas but they do bring a lot of problems.
Shetland got a huge amount of money to spend on infrastructure as part of the deal for allowing oil industry development - their road network was rebuilt using some of that money in the '90s.
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Re: NC500 Road Surface

Post by KeithW »

Starling wrote: Sat Jun 18, 2022 20:40 If you go out to Shetland, Orkney or the Western Isle you will find roads in much better condition than on the NC500.

To deal with the problems or rurality the Shetland, Orkney or the Western Isle councils get much more money per head of population than other councils, about £3500 per head per year. But the Highland Council doesn't, it only gets the Scottish average at about £1k per head per year, and people say most of that gets spend around Inverness.

The Highland Council gets a lot less money than those 3 island councils (per head) but gets far more tourist traffic than those 3 councils put together.

VAT can't really be counted as a local tourist tax because there is no mechanism that links the VAT raised from tourist spending to how much money a local authority gets to spend on roads. I guess it would be a tourist tax if VAT from the tourism industry went directly to local authorities.

Caravans and motorhomes are viewed very negatively by many people who live in rural areas, they don't bring many benefits to the rural areas but they do bring a lot of problems.

Which raises the obvious question how many of the visitors are driving motorhomes or towing caravans ? The NC500 survey showed 26%

I know when I first went to John O'Groats I was towing a van but it never went North of Dornoch and we only had an electric coolbox, mainly to keep butter, wine and cheese in. My experience with caravans is most towers will park the van up at useful location to tour from just as I now do with holiday cottages. Last time I went up north the only route I saw a lot of motorhome and campervans on was on the A830 from Fort William to Mallaig
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Re: NC500 Road Surface

Post by Ruperts Trooper »

KeithW wrote: Sat Jun 18, 2022 20:55
Starling wrote: Sat Jun 18, 2022 20:40 If you go out to Shetland, Orkney or the Western Isle you will find roads in much better condition than on the NC500.

To deal with the problems or rurality the Shetland, Orkney or the Western Isle councils get much more money per head of population than other councils, about £3500 per head per year. But the Highland Council doesn't, it only gets the Scottish average at about £1k per head per year, and people say most of that gets spend around Inverness.

The Highland Council gets a lot less money than those 3 island councils (per head) but gets far more tourist traffic than those 3 councils put together.

VAT can't really be counted as a local tourist tax because there is no mechanism that links the VAT raised from tourist spending to how much money a local authority gets to spend on roads. I guess it would be a tourist tax if VAT from the tourism industry went directly to local authorities.

Caravans and motorhomes are viewed very negatively by many people who live in rural areas, they don't bring many benefits to the rural areas but they do bring a lot of problems.

Which raises the obvious question how many of the visitors are driving motorhomes or towing caravans ? The NC500 survey showed 26%

I know when I first went to John O'Groats I was towing a van but it never went North of Dornoch and we only had an electric coolbox, mainly to keep butter, wine and cheese in. My experience with caravans is most towers will park the van up at useful location to tour from just as I now do with holiday cottages.
We tend to stay for 7-10 nights at a campsite and use that as a base for touring but my perception is that most other caravanners have shorter stays while motorhomers only seem to stop 1-2 nights on authorised campsites.
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Re: NC500 Road Surface

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KeithW wrote: Sat Jun 18, 2022 20:55I know when I first went to John O'Groats I was towing a van but it never went North of Dornoch and we only had an electric coolbox, mainly to keep butter, wine and cheese in...
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Re: NC500 Road Surface

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Like most parts of the UK my experience is that the quality of road surfacing in the Highlands is patchy (excuse the pun). There are lengthy sections of excellent standard surfaces eg. much of the A832 west from Garve to Kinlochewe. The A roads on Skye are generally very good or excellent, as is in my recollection the A835 from near Dingwall to Ullapool. Equally there are A roads which are crying out for resurfacing eg. the A82 from the Ballachulish Bridge to the Corran Ferry. The A87 from Invergarry for the first few miles is rather variable too. Some of the unimproved S1 A roads seem to have been left to decay in the expectation that the roads will be replaced by new S2 alignments before the resurfacing becomes essential eg. the S1 section of A832 west of Loch Maree and the S1 section of A890 in Glen Carron. By some distance the worst road surfaces I have encountered in Scotland were not in the Highland region, but on the Isle of Arran. It's five years since I was last there but there were some truly dreadful stretches on the main coast road round the island.
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Re: NC500 Road Surface

Post by jabbaboy »

owen b wrote: Sat Jun 18, 2022 21:27 Like most parts of the UK my experience is that the quality of road surfacing in the Highlands is patchy (excuse the pun). There are lengthy sections of excellent standard surfaces eg. much of the A832 west from Garve to Kinlochewe. The A roads on Skye are generally very good or excellent, as is in my recollection the A835 from near Dingwall to Ullapool. Equally there are A roads which are crying out for resurfacing eg. the A82 from the Ballachulish Bridge to the Corran Ferry. The A87 from Invergarry for the first few miles is rather variable too. Some of the unimproved S1 A roads seem to have been left to decay in the expectation that the roads will be replaced by new S2 alignments before the resurfacing becomes essential eg. the S1 section of A832 west of Loch Maree and the S1 section of A890 in Glen Carron. By some distance the worst road surfaces I have encountered in Scotland were not in the Highland region, but on the Isle of Arran. It's five years since I was last there but there were some truly dreadful stretches on the main coast road round the island.
Must admit just come along the A890/A832 from Skye today and parts of it is up there for some of the worst surface I've ever experienced in the UK on a long distance A road. It's in an absolutely shocking state parts of it and I'm surprised a biker hasn't been seriously hurt. https://goo.gl/maps/MYtDkbUC3LSt8J5k6 - that pretty much sums up a large chunk of it and it's similar just outside Garve aswell. Not sure why they're not even making an effort to patch the holes considering that was over a month ago now.

There's been lots of resurfacing on the A87 though including the bit you've mentioned there. It's in great shape, to give credit, as it was a mess a few year back. The S1 section through Stromeferry has been done aswell, it seems they've tried to widen it as much as they can aswell as most of it is S1.5 now.
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Re: NC500 Road Surface

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jabbaboy wrote: Sun Jun 19, 2022 20:09
owen b wrote: Sat Jun 18, 2022 21:27 Like most parts of the UK my experience is that the quality of road surfacing in the Highlands is patchy (excuse the pun). There are lengthy sections of excellent standard surfaces eg. much of the A832 west from Garve to Kinlochewe. The A roads on Skye are generally very good or excellent, as is in my recollection the A835 from near Dingwall to Ullapool. Equally there are A roads which are crying out for resurfacing eg. the A82 from the Ballachulish Bridge to the Corran Ferry. The A87 from Invergarry for the first few miles is rather variable too. Some of the unimproved S1 A roads seem to have been left to decay in the expectation that the roads will be replaced by new S2 alignments before the resurfacing becomes essential eg. the S1 section of A832 west of Loch Maree and the S1 section of A890 in Glen Carron. By some distance the worst road surfaces I have encountered in Scotland were not in the Highland region, but on the Isle of Arran. It's five years since I was last there but there were some truly dreadful stretches on the main coast road round the island.
Must admit just come along the A890/A832 from Skye today and parts of it is up there for some of the worst surface I've ever experienced in the UK on a long distance A road. It's in an absolutely shocking state parts of it and I'm surprised a biker hasn't been seriously hurt. https://goo.gl/maps/MYtDkbUC3LSt8J5k6 - that pretty much sums up a large chunk of it and it's similar just outside Garve aswell. Not sure why they're not even making an effort to patch the holes considering that was over a month ago now.

There's been lots of resurfacing on the A87 though including the bit you've mentioned there. It's in great shape, to give credit, as it was a mess a few year back. The S1 section through Stromeferry has been done aswell, it seems they've tried to widen it as much as they can aswell as most of it is S1.5 now.
Thanks for the update, it seems like bits of the A890 have deteriorated while other bits have been repaired since I last went that way. The last time I used the A832 it was very good from Grudie to Kinlochewe but if I recall correctly the stretch east of Grudie to Garve is an older alignment and a worse surface. I've used the A87 recently and noticed there'd been a lot of resurfacing, but they missed some bits where a heavy rain shower was revealing drainage problems and a lot of unevenness at the side of the road, causing the driver in front of me to drive over the centre line markings for several miles from Invergarry.
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Re: NC500 Road Surface

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rileyrob wrote: Tue Jun 07, 2022 09:08 Roads in the north of Scotland seem to be suffering from a strange failure this year, one which I haven't come across (certainly as any more than a localised problem) in the past. This is that they are developing large, shallow 'pot holes', where the top surface, to a depth of maybe 5-10mm, of the road fails over an area which can extend to several square metres while the lower portion of the same tarmac layer seems to survive. This causes wide rough patches, without the thunk-thunk of a pothole. I'd be interested to hear any theories on why this is happening. I have primarily encountered it on the A82, A84 and A85 - trunk routes, but also in Fife and elsewhere. (I haven't as yet, actually stopped and examined these failures close up).
I was intending to stop and get some photos of this over the weekend, but Bear have been unusually efficient and been out dealing with it. Admittedly, most of the 'repairs' have been done by trying to splurge some fresh tarmac onto the damaged surface, leaving a bump instead of a dip, but from Glencoe up to Rannoch Summit there are three miles of fresh tarmac, with more either side of Crianlarich, on the A85, A86 and A83 in various places.
owen b wrote: Sat Jun 18, 2022 21:27... there are A roads which are crying out for resurfacing eg. the A82 from the Ballachulish Bridge to the Corran Ferry.
Bear and Transport Scotland have been trying to deal with this for years. My understanding is that due to the narrow width of the carriageway, they cannot resurface with traffic running under modern safety requirements. Equally, due to the properties along the roadside they cannot work overnight.
They originally proposed closing the road for something like 9am-3pm each day for a number of weeks, outside of the main holiday seasons, but there were vociferous objections from a small minority in Fort William (I think court cases were mentioned). An alternative of 5-11pm was discussed, with a similar result. End result, as I understand it, was that TS said 'sod you then we have plenty of bits of road needing money spent on them, we'll put Onich back to the bottom of the pile'. I believe that the local Community Council were supportive throughout.
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Re: NC500 Road Surface

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owen b wrote: Sat Jun 18, 2022 21:27 Like most parts of the UK my experience is that the quality of road surfacing in the Highlands is patchy (excuse the pun). There are lengthy sections of excellent standard surfaces eg. much of the A832 west from Garve to Kinlochewe. The A roads on Skye are generally very good or excellent, as is in my recollection the A835 from near Dingwall to Ullapool. Equally there are A roads which are crying out for resurfacing eg. the A82 from the Ballachulish Bridge to the Corran Ferry. The A87 from Invergarry for the first few miles is rather variable too. Some of the unimproved S1 A roads seem to have been left to decay in the expectation that the roads will be replaced by new S2 alignments before the resurfacing becomes essential eg. the S1 section of A832 west of Loch Maree and the S1 section of A890 in Glen Carron. By some distance the worst road surfaces I have encountered in Scotland were not in the Highland region, but on the Isle of Arran. It's five years since I was last there but there were some truly dreadful stretches on the main coast road round the island.
The west coast section of the road around Arran has been downgraded to a C class road, which suggests North Ayrshire Council is trying to save money, hence the road quality has dropped.
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Re: NC500 Road Surface

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exiled wrote: Tue Jun 21, 2022 13:12
owen b wrote: Sat Jun 18, 2022 21:27 Like most parts of the UK my experience is that the quality of road surfacing in the Highlands is patchy (excuse the pun). There are lengthy sections of excellent standard surfaces eg. much of the A832 west from Garve to Kinlochewe. The A roads on Skye are generally very good or excellent, as is in my recollection the A835 from near Dingwall to Ullapool. Equally there are A roads which are crying out for resurfacing eg. the A82 from the Ballachulish Bridge to the Corran Ferry. The A87 from Invergarry for the first few miles is rather variable too. Some of the unimproved S1 A roads seem to have been left to decay in the expectation that the roads will be replaced by new S2 alignments before the resurfacing becomes essential eg. the S1 section of A832 west of Loch Maree and the S1 section of A890 in Glen Carron. By some distance the worst road surfaces I have encountered in Scotland were not in the Highland region, but on the Isle of Arran. It's five years since I was last there but there were some truly dreadful stretches on the main coast road round the island.
The west coast section of the road around Arran has been downgraded to a C class road, which suggests North Ayrshire Council is trying to save money, hence the road quality has dropped.
Yes, although some of the really bad bits were on the A road section. To be fair, there was resurfacing going on in some places while I was there. I would hope that since I was there the situation has improved.
Owen
swissferry
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Joined: Tue Aug 22, 2017 20:42

Re: NC500 Road Surface

Post by swissferry »

I recall reading in the Arran Banner around 15 years ago that shoddy road repairs were blamed on the asphalt being too cold due to the time taken to come from the mainland by ferry.
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