A9

Almost a daily event on the A9

The A9 is Scotland's backbone but has become the deformed spine of the nation.  For almost forty years I have been travelling it 4 or 5  times a year to reach the hills of the north beyond or simply to make a meeting in Inverness. Today was for the latter reason and it was a return trip. The experience was no better or quicker, owing to road works and heavy lorries, than it was in 1973 when it took three and a half hours during the Friday evening wagon train on the narrow twisting old A9 to reach Aviemore from Glasgow for a weekend on the ski slopes in the days when snow was more reliable.

The section of the A9 from Perth to Inverness is notorious for having more accidents than any other section of road in Scotland.  So bad that the figures for the last two years have yet to be published. The reason for the unacceptable state of the road is usually attributed to the lack of strategic decision making by the Scottish Government which has direct responsibility for trunk roads.  There are sections of dual carriageway laced with single carriageway sections all the way, completing the job seems to be beyond the ken of successive governments.  Traffic is held up for 5 or 6 miles behind lorries travelling at 40 mph.  The dual carriageway section approaches and it is like the grid of a grandprix as white vans, corsas, empty lorries and executive saloons vie to get the outside lane for a quick dash down the next couple of miles of dual carriageway.  Not to be outdone the holding lorry, or caravan in summer, accelerates to 60mph with the effect of reducing the number of vehicles that can pass.  More frustration builds up and attempts are then made on the next single carriageway section to make the thwarted overtaking manoeuvre .

A good walking friend with whom I have often driven up the A9 is a highway engineer.  He explained how in the 1970's the Scottish Office guidance for road design was to blend the new highways in with the landscape and construct sweeping curves.  This made for scenic journeys when traffic was far slower and lighter than today but it has left a legacy of suicidal overtaking traps. On most trips there are generally two or three incidents when crazy drivers are travelling well beyond any speed limit to get in front of that lorry, caravan or slow moving car ahead.  The oncoming victims are randomly engaged as they appear round the graceful bends into the speeding madmen. Any journey along the A9 induces several bouts of road rage and keeping it bottled seems impossible for many drivers.  It explains why there has been an average of over 200 accidents and 15 fatalities a year along Scotland's backbone.

Even the Dutch/Australian author Michael Faber, who is domiciled in Scotland, did not achieve such butchery in his novel 'Under the Skin'. This novel was set on the A9 where an extraterrestrial female, Scarlett Johannson, picks up male hitch hikers and returns their bodies to her planet as 'vodsel' - a tasty meat dish of human flesh. More recently Ian Rankin has set his latest Rebus novel 'Standing in Another Man's Grave' on the A9 with another set of killings to accompany those of Faber as well as the annual cull from road fatalities.

In the context of this level of road kill it is unbelievable to understand how Edinburgh trams at a cost of £776m and a second Forth road bridge costing £1.6bn have obtained priority over the A9. Both Edinburgh and Glasgow have superb bus links from their airports to their city centres and the Forth road bridge generates much unsustainable commuter traffic whilst at most times of the day it has more than enough capacity to cope with routine commercial and visitor traffic. Of course it may be that the existing Forth road bridge has a limited life span but no Minister is prepared to admit that so we must assume that the A9 is a lower priority than making Scotland ever more Edinburgh centric.

In the land of engineering legends - Sir William Arrol, John Dunlop, John McAdam, Sir Robert McAlpine and Thomas Telford - the lack of investment in the A9 is Scotland's greatest engineering tragedy.

Scarlett Johannson as A9 hitch hiker