How many more people have to die on the A9 before the SNP finally lives up to its pledge to dual Scotland’s most notorious road?
How many more families have to go through the anguish of picking up the pieces of shattered lives before the Holyrood government keeps a promise it made a full 16 years ago?
Today, on behalf of the communities we serve across the north, we pose these questions directly to newly installed transport minister Fiona Hyslop – and urge her to put the long-awaited dualling project at the top of her “to do” list.
Death statistics on the Perth-Inverness A9 stretch
The raw statistics for the death toll on the Perth-Inverness stretch of the A9 – a heartbreaking 335 since 1979 – should leave her and fellow ministers in no doubt that this vital artery to the Highlands has been unfit for purpose not just for years, but for decades.
And behind what should never be approached as mere numbers are stories of loss, grief – and deep frustration that a route which serves not only countless towns, villages, the Highland capital itself and the region’s lifeblood tourism industry and scores of other businesses is being treated, as campaigners believe, like a “country backroad”.
The Scottish Government doesn’t quite do a revolving door for transport minister in the way the UK one manages with prime ministers, but four in the space of two years, while what should be the country’s top priority infrastructure project languishes in limbo, is not a good look.
Criticism from Civil Engineering Contractors Association
Ms Hyslop will not have missed the stinging criticism levelled at the SNP over its A9 failures by the Civil Engineering Contractors Association, nor should she be in any doubt that the people of the north are heart-sick of what sound like increasingly empty promises and hollow words from a government which has let them down time and again.
Ms Hyslop, First Minister Humza Yousaf and the rest of the SNP administration in Edinburgh must at last live up to the commitments made by their party and dual the A9. And we pledge to continue to hold all of them to account until they deliver.
The state of the road has for years been a national scandal – it is now a national tragedy.
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