07.30: The A83 has just been closed with another landslide at Rest and Be Thankful.
The emergency diversion route the Transport Minister promised for mid-November – which would have coped with diverted traffic – is of course not ready, due to Transport Scotland’s incompetence.
The usual 50 mile diversion applies – via A82 to Tyndrum, A85 to Lochawe, A819 to Inveraray to return to A83 and vice versa.
Update 07.55: The Traffic Scotland website, as reported below – is not even showing this closure yet.
Update 08.10: Traffic Scotland still not showing A83 landslide closure - or closures of A814 and A815 with flooding.
Update 08.35: The closure of the A82 remains unreported on Traffic Scotland.
TS sent out a Twitter message at 07:47.
How is Nicola Sturgeon going to get to Dunoon now? Argyll Ferries is off. Western Ferries is off. The road out of Dunoon is shut at Sandbank because of flooding. And now the A83 is closed too.
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Self-levitation.
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Perhaps Nicola will go through the regular travel frustrations of visitors and people living in Cowal and Dunoon.
No doubt she will have travelled yesterday staying overnight in Dunoon!
May have to stay a day or two…
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…and the A816 Lochgilphead – Oban road just west of Lochgilphead – no mention of that on Traffic Scotland. Poor.
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David, You’re having a laugh if you think a government minister has that much free time.
But while you’re there, can you explain why nothing was done about either the Rest or the ferry issue from 1999 to 2007? It may not be as swift as we would like – the very first job was to find the money in a very tight budget – but at least it’s on the go now. I don’t recall seeing any yellow jackets or hardhats on that hill prior to 2007.
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Our esteemed Westminster MP should be asked the same question – yet another letter from him in the latest Oban Times, bashing the Nats for not sorting the Rest – a remarkable case of selective memory loss, I could’ve sworn his own mob were in a previous Holyrood coalition government that sat on its hands for years and years.
Too busy, perhaps, ‘massaging’ their housing allowances – you’ve got to get your priorities right, after all.
The regular Meadows flooding problem on the A816 just outside Lochgilphead is just as much in need of resolution as the problem at the Rest – we need resolute councillors as well as dynamic MSPs..
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The problem with landslides blocking the road began in 2007 so it’s ridiculous to blame Labour or Liberals .
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Sorry Ifor E: there was also a land slide in 2004:
http://www.transportscotland.gov.uk/files/documents/roads/A83.pdf so the problem does predate the current SG.
Also, it is not as if the SG (via Transport Scotland) have done nothing: there has been extensive work on drainage, netting and slope monitoring but this has not been effective (a different charge).
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IfE: It’s around ten years since I first got to wondering what the problem was with disruption of the Rest, so to say that the problem began in 2007 is just not true.
My first recollection of trouble was being confronted by a violent ‘tidal wave’ of mud and rocks charging out of the forest below the ‘Wee Rest’ way back in the early 1980s.
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The Rest Closure IS on Traffic Scotland website timed at 0714
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I looked this morning and the Rest and Be Thankful closure was on the Map View but not the List View. That seems to be prioritised by last added and has a maximum number so it consisted solely of queues around the big towns and cities which probably happen most mornings at rush hour.
I would have expected closures to be at the top.
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http://trafficscotland.org/currentincidents/details.aspx?id=c22671
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And predictably animated Anne leaps to the snp defence! (again!).
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Not really Simon. It’s more that I can’t abide Mr Graham and his eternal wheenging about things his own citycentric party completely ignored. I’ll be the first to say the SNP has made mistakes – there will be some who recall me campaigning against them – but you can’t really blame them/us for a badly made hill, climate change and decades of neglect. I think we should just be glad it’s getting attention and funding now.
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Well Anne, mibbe Mr Graham would not be wheening (whinging surely??) if you snp had kept their pre-election promise to build two new car ferries for Mr Graham’s Dunoon.
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“Citycentric” Anne? You are joking, or maybe you’ve forgotten.
To refresh your memory, Labour is the Party that introduced the Air Discount Scheme for remote and island residents, invested in new ferries and pier facilities, secured investment for roads across the Highlands, including the upgrade of the Mallaig road to two-lane, among other improvements.
All parties produce ‘lines to take’, but SNP members need to be more discerning before they swallow that “citycentric” nonsense.
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The news this morning that Trump has sanctioned the start of design work on his second government-sponsored golf course on the Aberdeen coast SSI will reassure everyone concerned that our government’s got its priorities wrong.
What’s progress on patching up a cart-track over the Rest for a bunch of revolting peasants in darkest Argyll compared with smoothing the way for the people who really matter, the movers and shakers of this proud country?
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Nicola Sturgeon is Cabinet Secretary for Infrastructure and Capital Investment, Keith Brown is Minister for Transport – the buck stops with them.
Ferries off, roads closed, trains disrupted. All suffering from broken promises and lack of investment.
Unbelievable sums have been invested elsewhere, bypasses, trains, trams, bridges. Why were the promised Dunoon vehicle ferries not delivered? Even if the promise was to be broken why were they so incompetent that they could not put in place a reliable passenger service?
New ferries for the entire Scottish ferry fleet could be provided at a fraction of the cost of some of the projects in the East, what is going on?
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And another thing – Traffic Scotland’s live cameras at the top of the Rest (and at Tyndrum) are ‘dead’ just when they could be of real use.
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Given that everybody and their granny have been complaining about the lack of action on this route by Transport Scotland – what exactly have the snp govt been doing? It is surely their job to ensure, ahead of winter, that the alternative route was in place?
What have they been doing for Gawd’s sake???
Mair incompetence?
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Perhaps, if they asked nicely, Alan Reid MP could arrange a wee bit of job creation for Abu Qatada to keep him out of mischief. Give him a shovel, drive him up to the Rest and leave him there until he’s worked off his debt to this country.
Come to think of it, if there were two shovels then Alan Reid could join him.
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I doubt if Reid could find the time to do any digging: he’s far too busy writing snide little letters to the press!
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“Come to think of it, if there were two shovels then Alan Reid could join him.”
He’d only get confused by you asking him to take his pick…!
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Which Traffic Scotland website is Newsroom looking at? Because when I look at THIS one (http://trafficscotland.org/currentincidents/details.aspx?id=c22671) what do I see? Oh, yes, “The A83 is closed both directions at the Rest and Be Thankful due to a Landslip. Road users planning to use this route are advised to follow the diversion route in operation”.
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As I said earlier Jim when I posted the same link – it’s been on since 07:14. Sixteen minutes BEFORE Newsie posted her nonsense.
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I sometimes wonder if Newsroom inhabits a paralell universe?
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The Rest and Be Thankful closure was not on the List View when I looked at around 0850h.
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Perhaps the time on there is not the time of posting on the site but the time of the closure decision? I’m not an expert but that’d explain the differential.
It’s either that or Newsie’s browser has cached the page and not refreshed. But then that’d be up to the site to ensure cached versions of the site aren’t displayed, surely?
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The blockage looks pretty insignificant in the BBC News website photo – 100-150 tons of slop – but apparently it’s blocked the drainage, sending a lot of water down the road.
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It’s open
http://www.dunoon-observer.com/index.php/news/1-news/5176-rest-open
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Well done Transport Scotland Nicola will now get home…
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She never got there… trip postponed….
Dunoon Observer….
http://www.dunoon-observer.com/index.php/news/1-news/5174-weather-chaos
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“Given that everybody and their granny have been complaining about the lack of action on this route by Transport Scotland – what exactly have the snp govt been doing? It is surely their job to ensure, ahead of winter, that the alternative route was in place?”
An alternative route IS in place: it goes via Crianlarich and Dalmally. And it will be quicker than waiting for the convoy system through the old military road!
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True: the military road diversion is really only needed when the Crianlarich route is blocked either because of the major roadworks planned for that route or where itself is blocked by weather or an accident at the same time the Rest is blocked. But it is needed and TS should perhaps have been more circumspect in offering November as the date by which the diversion would be available before they had the legal position sorted out.
The old business adage about everything taking twice as long and costing twice as much seems in danger of coming true but hopefully we will see rapid progress from here on in.
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‘The legal position’ needs explaining – just how complicated can it be to arrange use of a fairly short and simple stretch of road? Was the delay perhaps in negotiating the provision of stock fencing, or were there other factors that in an open society we have every right to know. The alternative – a ministerial silence – will lead people to conclude either that Transport Scotland has made a dog’s breakfast of the legal work, that the landowner is the worst sort of greedy parasite – or both.
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I seem to remember a comment some months back that the legal ownership was actually unclear and what was thought to be the case (with regards to ownership) turned out not to be the case. Sorting out the actual ownership may have slowed things down while this was sorted out.
Despite loose talk of the land owner being greedy I haven’t seen any actual evidence that this was the case. WE should always be careful in jumping to conclusions when information is scarce.
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That’s why a ministerial silence, leaving free range to speculation, would be stupid.
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It’s open again
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…but for how long?
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I suggest you all switch off your computers and listen to the wireless instead – the Rest closure was on Radio Scotland every five minutes this morning as soon as it happened.
Or just look out of the window – very heavy rain = Rest closed. Simples!
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The problem with the Traffic Scotland website is not confined to the Rest And Be Thankful. You cannot rely at busy times on looking at the List View to see if a route is open. The Map View often fails when the site is very busy so you cannot check there. It should be fairly obvious that a road closure is more important than a five minute queue at some traffic lights in Edinburgh that happens every morning during the rush hour.
I am surprised that it was on Radio Scotland every five minutes, travel news reports are usually on about every fifteen minutes. Most people don’t have radios in the house with RDS travel news so can easily miss these reports.
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What difference does A82 make to Travel time comparing Arrochar to Dunoon turn off and route through Tyndrum.
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From the A82/A83 junction at Tarbert to the A83/A815 junction — the Dunoon road end — is 59.6 miles (1hr 25min) via Crianlarich, Tyndrum and Inverary as against 12.6 miles (17 minutes) over the Rest according to Google.
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For those travelling further west than Inveraray it’s around an extra 26 miles i.e. an hour in good conditions.
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Surprised after slating the Traffic Scotland website yesterday that this site doesn’t even report the road is open again? Looking at the home page of For Argyll you would think the Rest is still closed and no update at the top of this article either……just saying….
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I do hope no-one from Switzerland, France or Germany, all liberally strewn with mountain roads, is reading this or they will die of laughter. I drove quickly through Switzerland on the way back from Italy in October and there were countless roadworks as they were getting ready for winter. I’m not of course talking about the really high passes which are seasonally closed because of snow, but of measures (including galleries and tunnels) to protect against landslides and rockfalls.
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