B865
| B865 | ||||
| Location Map ( geo) | ||||
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| From: | Raigmore Interchange (NH685456) | |||
| To: | Shore Street Roundabout (NH663457) | |||
| Distance: | 1.5 miles (2.4 km) | |||
| Meets: | A9, A96, B9006, B862, A82 | |||
| Former Number(s): | A9, B9161, A82, B861 | |||
| Primary Destinations | ||||
| Highway Authorities | ||||
| Traditional Counties | ||||
| Route outline (key) | ||||
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For an earlier B865 in Inverness, along Longman Road, see B865 (Longman Road).
For the former B865 to Portmahomack, see B865 (Portmahomack).
The B865 in Inverness is a short road through the city centre, but is still dualled for over half of its length. This seems to be due to its former life as the A9, which also carried A96 traffic into the city centre.
Starting at Raigmore Interchange, where the A96 now terminates on the A9, the road heads west to a roundabout with the B9006, and then on alongside the railway line through the Millburn area of Inverness. As it turns south, it drops to S4 outside Morrisons, before narrowing again to pass under the Eastgate Shopping Centre.
We are now in the heart of the city, weaving through numerous traffic lights and turning lanes to find our way into Academy Street, outside the railway station. From here, it is a fairly straightforward run north westwards up to Shore Street Roundabout, where the route terminates on the A82.
History
As one of the main routes into Inverness, Millburn Road has had three different numbers over the years. It was originally classified as part of the A9 in 1922, which remained the case until the Kessock Bridge opened in 1982. At this point, the A9 was re-routed over the new bridge, and Millburn Road became part of the A82. However, in an effort to remove all long distance traffic from the city centre, Longman Road and Friars Bridge were built to the west, and by the end of the 1980s the A82 had been re-routed again, swapping numbers with the B865. By this time, the Eastgate Shopping Centre had already been built, so the current route under the bridges was given to the B865, although as the Falcon Mall extension had not been built, the bridges did not exist.
The Academy Street section of the current B865 is now on its fourth number. It was originally part of the B861. However, when the A9 was extended north in 1935, the B861 to the north of the city centre was renumbered as the B9161. With the opening of the Kessock Bridge, the A82 gained Academy Street as part of a one-way system to help ease traffic around the city centre, and as the Kessock Ferry had ceased, the rest of the B9161 was downgraded. When the A82 and B865 routes swapped, Academy Street became the western part of the B865.
