A953

If there were ever a prize for the most pointless A-road, the A953 would be high up on the list. It is a brief stretch of tarmac extending from the terminus of the A97, along Quayside to Banff Marina.

The A953 Quayside runs past Banff Harbour

The road begins on the seafront at the northern edge of Banff, by the site of the long-gone railway station, via a right-turn at the T-junction which marks the end of the A97. The alignment points due north, but the road immediately loops around like an upturned horseshoe to head south-east along Quayside. It runs along Banff Marina, past Banff Sailing Club, to end at a fork in the road. From here, the left prong continues as an unclassified road along Harbour Place towards the B9142, while the right prong climbs steeply up the similarly unclassified Sheriffs Brae to Banff town centre. The whole route is less than a fifth of a mile long, and could easily have been made an extension of the A97. It could just as easily have been left unclassified.

Few maps, other than the Ordnance Survey, mark the route as an A-road at all. In addition, neither the A953 nor the A97 north of the A98 are signposted.

Nevertheless, the route remains listed by Aberdeenshire Council as still following its 1922 itinerary, so it must serve some purpose! The 1922 lists show a number of A-roads whose sole reason for existence appears to be to provide docks with an A-road connection, demonstrating that sea transport was far important then than it is now. The continued Class I status of the A953 is however unusual, considering that it is completely invisible on the ground.

An OpenStreetMap trace for this route awaits uploading to the SABRE Wiki.