A972

The A972 was originally the full 6 mile length of Dundee's Kingsway. It is now just just over a mile long, at the eastern end of Kingsway.

Route

The western end of the A972

It runs east from the A90 and A929 at Forfar Road Crossroads to meet the A929 at Scott Fyffe Roundabout. Dual carriageway throughout, with two intermediate roundabouts and a number of limited access at-grade junctions, the A972 still forms an important link in the Trunk Road network. The western end of the route passes through a largely residential area, with one section having a service road set back behind trees for the houses facing onto Kingsway, while all the other properties are accessed from the other side. roughly half way along, the houses on the south side stop and an industrial area takes over, with a retail park opposite it soon after.

History

Dundee in 1956 showing the full length of the original A972

The A972 originally came into being in the 1920s as the new number for the new Kingsway road, which was designed to become the Dundee bypass. In 1926 the road was opened between the A923 in the west and the A92 in the east and in 1934 the road had been extended west to meet the A85 and form a full bypass to the city. The road then remained the full length of the Kingsway, from the A85 to the A92, for many years and was gradually upgraded to dual carriageway. The 0.77 mile online dualling from Pitkerro Road to Arbroath Road was completed in January 1957 per the 1957 Scottish Roads Report. By 1961 (when the OS first depicted dual carriageways) the route had been dualled east of the B960 through to the A92. However, a decade later no further progress westwards had been made. The junction with the B960, and that with the A923 to the west have been grade-separated, presumably when the route was dualled through them.

Much later, when the Invergowrie bypass was built for the A85, the western end of the A972 was moved to a new roundabout north of Invergowrie. This saw the original start point of the A972 also bypassed (although the roundabout remains and is used as a lorry park) as it was superseded by the new junction. Over the years, the city grew out to meet the bypass, and subsequently merge with the villages to the north so that the full length of the old route now lies within the city boundary, albeit with some parkland remaining to the north. However, when the A90 was re-routed north to Aberdeen in the early 1990s, the majority of the A972 was lost to the new number, with only the easternmost mile or so remaining.