The B7002 is a short link road running south west from Bathgate in West Lothian.
Crossing Bathgate Water
The route starts at traffic lights on the A89 in the middle of Bathgate and heads southwest along Whitburn Road. The buildings of the town centre soon give way to a retail park, with a roundabout giving access to a supermarket, and linking back to the A89. The route then runs alongside the Glasgow to Edinburgh via Airdrie line, passing through some parkland before turning away to go through the residential area of Whiteside. Some of the newer housing on the right backs onto the main road, but the older properties face onto it as it curves round a left-hand bend and goes over the railway to reach a roundabout. The railway line was only re-opened in 2010 after being closed in the 1980s and so a new bridge had to be built over the line; a short stretch of temporary road was built alongside the route of the railway to carry the B7002 during the works, but was closed again following the opening of the new bridge and turned into a wide cycle path.
At the roundabout, the route turns right, albeit still following the residential Whitburn Road. It then curves further west to leave town, and run around an industrial estate. Mid way along, as it starts to curve back to the south, the route crosses a roundabout, which, perhaps unusually, seems to only serve private industrial sites on either side of the main road. After passing a large pond on the right, the B7002 makes a beeline for the Boghead Roundabout where it meets the A801, A706 and A7066 and comes to an end.
History
It was originally unclassified but had gained its number by 1928, when it is shown on the revised MOT map. Although the route now ends at the Boghead Roundabout, this did not exist in 1928, indeed it is not clear if the new A8 (now the A706 / A7066) had even been opened when the B7002 was first classified. The 1926 OS One Inch map shows that Whitburn Road simply crossed the fields as it continued south. By 1932, however, the new Glasgow and Edinburgh Road had been completed, and numbered as the new A8, crossing the new B7002 at a simple crossroads. The roundabout was built as part of the construction of the M8 motorway, which opened in 1969, and saw the B7002 curtailed, albeit with the link to the motorway briefly numbered as the A7002, prior to the extension of the A801 a few years later.
The B7001 therefore originally continued ahead, from the sixth exit at the roundabout, which is now a short dead end serving the farms at Drum and Pottishaw. Beyond Drum Farm, the route wound across the fields and over the River Almond, but is now cut by the motorway. On the far side the route entered East Whitburn along Bathgate Road, which still ends at a T junction on the A705.