Argyll’s arterial connection with Glasgow and the south is closed. The area might as well be besieged. The only possible road diversion adds 60 miles and an hour and a half to the journey in either direction.
Who has been speaking to the press about the situation? Roseanna Cunningham, the Environment Minister. But the prime responsibility lies with the Transport department.
There are now real questions to be asked and answered on whether there should have been serious construction work done at Rest and Be Thankful since October 2007.
There is the need for information – consultation – on what is to happen now?
But where is Stewart Stevenson, the Transport Minister? He remains silent and invisible while poor Roseanna Cunningham trots out platitudes on her sympathy for the residents of Argyll.
Stevenson is not a Minister who appears engaged with his brief. He has been ineffectual with Clydeport and the Loch Striven situation. He has come out to play only when personally criticised. His natural bent is to see and explain why he can do nothing rather than seize what he has and make a difference.
This is a serious weakness in the current Scottish Government’s front bench. In a country with the topograpy and the dispersed population of Scotland, transport is the key to economic and social sustainability. Scotland – and Argyll – needs much better than Stewart Stevenson has yet shown himself to be in the Transport role – but For Argyll remains wedded to the notion of the perfectability of man.
Here is a situation where the main arterial route in and out of Argyll – the A83, is closed again with a landslide 50% bigger than the one at exactly the same place in October 2007. This earlier one saw the A83 closed for weeks and since then, operated with reduction to a single lane with traffic light control at the stretch overwhelmed by the landslip.
The debris will be cleared today (9th September) but before the road can be reopened engineering assessments will have to be done on the security of the road itself as well as of the hill above the affected stretch.
The anxiety with the 2007 landslip was that the water carrying the landslip down had washed through below the road as well as over its surface. This raised questions about the physical security of the foundations of the sidelong hillside road and of the embankment below it.
Since nothing has been done to restore the road to its full operating width since then, it is logical to assume that those concerns remain. Otherwise Argyll has been shortchanged.
No one will accept that a road already considered insecure, even if within the bounds of safety in a single lane operation – will not have had that damage increased by a further landslip on the same spot and with a 50% greater volume of debris.
This is an area with the largest percentage of Scotland’s forest estate – meaning timber lorries constantly on the road. It is an area working to develop its tourist profile. It is an area with a bright future in marine renewable energy and it will have a reinvigorated wind turbine tower manufacturer at Machrihanish in Kintyre.
All of these factors require for Argyll a first class and reliable road transport infrastructure.
Another patch-and-make-do on the A83 will not do. Argyll and Bute Council will have the full weight of public opinion behind it if it refuses to accept anything other than a major construction solution now – which may well require a major rethinking.
Pingback: Argyll News: A83 closed: landslide at Rest & Be Thankful :Argyll,Argyll Bute,arterial road,Transport Scotland, | For Argyll
This week’s situation on the A83 in not new or unknown. There are landslips near the Rest & Be Thankful at some point in most years, after spells of very rainy weather. So far drivers and passengers have been lucky and nobody, to my knowledge, has yet been killed in these events, but how long will we need to trust to luck ?
There have been short-term ‘patches’ to the road and roadsides in previous years, but it is well past time to find a solution and do the work properly. It’s always going to be a difficult place to have a road, and neither the original road nor the present version was made to carry today’s constant heavy traffic. Having the county of Argyll virtually cut off from the south, and suffering delays to public transport and long re-routing of traffic is not acceptable. Let’s have a commitment from the Transport Minister on a timescale for making permanent improvements .
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I would have thought that there are now doubts as to whether this road is viable at all due to climatic change and a huge volume of heavy traffic it wasn’t designed to take. The answer lies in rerouting most traffic to the sea for south and west Argyll as used to be the case.
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another snp failure
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You ask “Where is the Transport Minister?”
At the exact time the primary post is published he is on site at the Rest and Be Thankful inspecting progress on clearing the site.
And with work done after the 2007 slip showing its benefits, the progress is very good indeed. 700~800 tonnes of debris are all but cleared and the protection put in place after 2007 means that the scouring that so damaged the road last time has not happened.
In 2007? A major closure over an extended period. Significant engineering works required to restore the road.
In 2009? A closure that will be measured in hours. Limited patching required.
Across Scotland significant weather events cause major damage and inconvenience. At the Rest and Be Thankful, the many millions of tonnes of unstable hillside are monitored and the road is closed on a precautionary basis after one of the regular patrols detects the beginnings of the slip.
Communities affected by the closure certainly but impact dramatically reduced by actions taken after 2007.
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@ Stewart Stevenson
And what did you do when you got there? Said we should ‘address’ climate change. What use is that? Argyll needs a road system for for purpose and fit for the future NOW. You should ‘address’ your job.
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