Hansard

I am grateful to be able to speak to the petitions. I have been involved with the campaign to improve the Stromeferry bypass for many years—probably for much of the time since I was elected—and I am really pleased that Mr Noble has brought the petitions to the Parliament. As you said, convener, parts of those roads, which link the current trunk roads on the route to Skye, are single track. However, the big issue is the Stromeferry bypass, which is subject to landslides. At that part of the road, the road and the rail line run side by side, so the landslides impact on both, and there is a risk to life. Children use that road daily to get to Plockton high school, which is also the National Centre of Excellence in Traditional Music, and ferry traffic for Uist and Harris uses the route that goes up to Uig on Skye. 10:15 When there is a landslide, the road can be closed for months, and it impacts badly on the community and commuters. I am concerned that the road is not recognised as a trunk road because it links the Highland Council mainland to the Western Isles via Skye. The road is also essential for secondary education and medical cover. The local hospital that serves the whole area is in Broadford in Skye, but it can become cut off from the community, creating stress and disruption to care. You can imagine what it must be like for families who cannot get to a loved one who is in hospital. Closing the road also cuts children off from their high school, which is unacceptable. The only alternative route involves a 130-mile diversion, which is impossible to take on a daily basis. The cost of improving the road is beyond the financial reach of Highland Council, which already has the greatest mileage of road to cover. Going by the mail from constituents, it would seem that most of it is falling into disrepair. It is pretty grim in places, and finding that amount of money for repairs is impossible. I am disappointed by Transport Scotland’s response. It says that one of the ways in which it gauges whether a route should become a trunk road is that it must “Provide the users with a coherent and continuous system of routes, which serve destinations of importance to industry, commerce, agriculture and tourism”. The route is part of the north coast 500, which is an internationally recognised tourist route. Indeed, there has been a lot of concern about how busy that route is. It is the main route between the Highlands and the southern Hebrides and Western Isles. It is the main route to the National Centre of Excellence in Traditional Music and it is critical to industry, farming, crofting and aquaculture, and also to the renewables and decommissioning industry because of the yard at Kishorn, which I hope is set to grow and provide a much-needed economic boost in that area. I therefore believe that the route fulfils Transport Scotland’s criterion. I ask the committee to raise that directly with the Scottish Government to persuade ministers of the merits of the route becoming a trunk road. It would serve well an area of Scotland that has largely been ignored in the past. We really need to create jobs and repopulate the area, which is under a lot of pressure from tourism and holiday homes. We need get people back to the area to make sure that it grows.