Argyll roads among one fifth of Scotland’s trunk roads at risk from landslides

Scottish Government agency, Transport Scotland, has identified 67 sites on Scotland’s main roads at high risk of landslides. The A82 from Glasgow to Inverness, with a lot of exposure in Argyll, is one of the worst, with 16 stretches at risk, the worst of which are in a 13 kilometre stretch along Loch Lochy north of Fort William.

In the case of the A83, leaving the A82 at Tarbet and running to Campbeltown in Kintyre, 11 stretches were identified as at high risk of landslides. This includes the approach to Rest and be Thankful, closed in October a year ago when 400 tonnes of water-borne soil and stones swept over – and under – the road. This part of the A83 is still operating on a traffic-light controlled single lane to reduce the weight carried on it until the effect of its undermining can be fully evaluated. The A83 was also seriously disrupted by landslides in 2004, also on the approach to the Rest – below the current site, in Glen Kinglas on the run down to Butter Bridge and at Cairndow on the approach to the head of Loch Fyne.

Transport Scotland does not consider that many of the at-risk sites justify the cost of major engineering. It has identified a need for more road protection from straightforward drain clearing, to barriers, fences and basins to collect debris and to tree planting schemes to bind soil on unstable slopes.

Dr Richard Dixon, of WWF Scotland (World Wildlife Fund), says: ‘It’s going to get worse of course – but the real problem with the rain is that we are getting more days of heavy rain and more periods where there is consistent rain over a number of days and that builds up just the right conditions to have these muddy debris flows. Scotland is going to get wetter. We should be looking at the land use, we should be looking at planting trees which bind the soil up and we should be looking at drainage’.