Comment posted Transport Scotland announce 2013 start to major A82 upgrade and Crianlarich bypass by Stephen Mackenzie.
There was nothing inevitable about the design of the new Loch Lomond A82, but I suppose it was fairly typical for the time. I rue in particular the damage caused to Rhubha Mhor, plainly visible from many points around the loch.
I’m concerned that the Pulpit Rock sidey-bridge will end up being as inelegant in retrospect as that.
A high level road (and dare I say a straightened out railway alongside?) would be an elegant solution. One imagines a succession of viaducts and tunnels. The only problem is… you’d have to demolish Tarbet to get up onto the hill.
Recent comments by Stephen Mackenzie
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This is true; it was initially shown as a slip on Loch Fyne side just north of Inveraray.I note that TS are yet to master the spelling of the word “Arrochar”.
- A83 closed due to another landslide – now reopened
That photo looks like the slip is in a different place from normal. Can anyone confirm that? - A83: Is there a planning issue in Transport Scotland’s intent to revise the old military road below Rest and Be Thankful?
Is there a source for this story about naming the Rest? I was under the impression the naming was older than the era of the motor car…I once walked up the remains of the old road from Butterbridge, and it occurred to me that it would be a very worthwhile part of a long distance route/cycle route into Argyll.
- Transport Minister tells McGrigor A83 emergency route ready in November
Go for a walk… all you will hear in Glen Croe is traffic noise. And don’t forget it’s full of forestry. So it’s hardly unspoiled. So an appropriately designed road gallery would on the whole, be a benefit. I remain convinced that the best long term plan is to divert the trunk road away from that glen and that hill, though. - 10 Downing Street to fly Saltire with Union Flag tomorrow for Andy Murray
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Good news – but it’s surely rather surprising that ‘a preferred alignment for an upgrade of the 16km section between Tarbet and Inverarnan’ has yet to be identified.. Given that this has been on the government trunk roads engineers ‘wish list’ since time immemorial.
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I agree with Robert – no point in building Pulpit Rock until the complete route between Tarbet and Inverarnan has been defined. Pulpit Rock isn’t even the biggest problem – that’s the section about half a mile North of Sloy, where there is 500m sandwiched between the lochside wall and railway. It is that narrow twisty section which is a problem whenever two coaches or LGVs meet – regular users will notice how few LGVs use the route. Of course most of them go to Stirling because that’s where they want to go – Grangemouth, Bathgate or the South – and they will still have to navigate the lower bridge at Crianlarich because we’re only getting half a bypass. Do the penpushers in Edinburgh not realise that the A85/4 is the more important road commercially?
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It would be interesting to know whether there’s already a notional plan for a future ‘other half’ of the Crianlarich bypass, and also whether the best alignment for at least some of the route between Tarbet and Inverarnan might turn out to be above the railway, and whether the current ‘water level’ scheme at Pulpit Rock designed to tie in with the existing substandard alignment might conflict with this.
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Though it is, I suppose, well past time for the Tarbet-Inverarnan stretch to be updated (though I take Duncan Martin’s point entirely) I would hope this could be done with greater sensitivity to preserving the lochside road’s extraordinary beauty than was done with the sector further south. There, though it may have been inevitable that a ‘smoothed’ modern road would obliterate the old road with its charming scenes of established woodland and shore, roadside scrub has been allowed to grow to the extent that views of the loch are now few and far between. Far better perhaps to build a modern road further up the hillside – the Tyndrum-Bridge of Orchy sector shows this need not be an eyesore – for the traffic in a hurry, and retain the lochside road for the tourists. Loch Lomond, after all, is a world-famous attraction, easily reachable from the Central Belt, and this is not perhaps the unaffordable frivolity it might seem.
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There was nothing inevitable about the design of the new Loch Lomond A82, but I suppose it was fairly typical for the time. I rue in particular the damage caused to Rhubha Mhor, plainly visible from many points around the loch.
I’m concerned that the Pulpit Rock sidey-bridge will end up being as inelegant in retrospect as that.
A high level road (and dare I say a straightened out railway alongside?) would be an elegant solution. One imagines a succession of viaducts and tunnels. The only problem is… you’d have to demolish Tarbet to get up onto the hill.
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Before the A82 was rebuilt between Luss and Tarbet alternative route proposals were presented to the public, and one was on a higher contour to avoid some of the more difficult topography at water level. However, at the end of the day, the increased risk of ice and snow affecting the higher route militated against it.
I doubt that any route north of Tarbet involving costly deviation of the railway would be entertained, and the more ‘straightening out’ involved, the higher the cost and potential for landscape damage, so maybe the Pulpit Rock scheme, involving a decent width of road but tight bends resulting in lower speeds than south of Tarbet, represents the order of the day for all the route – water level, minimal scarring of the hillside, but very twisty in places.
As far as I could see at the public exhibition at Ardlui of the Pulpit Rock project, it’s been designed to be much less obtrusive than the Rhubha Mhor ‘quarry’ between Inverbeg and Tarbet.
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