Hundreds of road signs are to change around Aberdeen to help direct people out to and in from the city bypass.
Aberdeen City Council has awarded a contract to a company to manufacture and site about 450 signs.
The installation of signs is expected to start before the end of the year and it will take several months to complete the task.
An Aberdeen City Council spokeswoman said: “The new signs are designed to help make the city centre a destination rather than a through-route and compliment the new bypass by helping to direct motorists to and from it.
“Due to the huge number of new signs, they are not being installed in one go and it will take several months for the job to be completed.
“The bypass has helped to reduce journey times for people in Aberdeen and the wider area, and the new signs will help people to find their way out of the city onto the bypass by the most appropriate route.”
For decades, motorists had to use Anderson Drive and South Anderson Drive as one of the main ways of going from north to south, along with other main roads to cut across the city centre.
The roads hierarchy report agreed by members of Aberdeen City Council’s City Growth committee set out a new way of moving traffic away from crossing the city centre and instead out to the AWPR. It builds on the City Centre Masterplan by making the city centre a destination rather than a through-route, and also improves air quality, supporting public transport, and helping to reduce congestion in the area.
The aim is to encourage traffic to leave the city by major arterial routes including King Street, Great Northern Road, Westburn Road/Lang Stracht and Wellington Road, using the bypass, and then come back into another part of the city.
The new signage is part of this work, along with reclassification of roads across the city. Later work such as junction improvements and changes to traffic light sequencing will build on these new routes.
The contract for the manufacture and installation of the new signs has been awarded by the local authority to Markon, a division of Aberdeen-based Leiths Group
David Steel, of Leiths Group, said: “We’re delighted to be working with Aberdeen City Council on this project, which will provide long-term improvements to traffic in the city.”
