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Public Petitions Committee, 24 Jun 2008

24 Jun 2008 · S3 · Public Petitions Committee

Item of business

New Petitions

A82 Upgrade (PE1140)

Stewart Maclean (A82 Partnership): Watch on SPTV

You will note that an 84-page economic report is attached to the petition. I am sure that you have all studied it in great detail, but for those of you who have not managed to do that yet, I will summarise it quickly. First, it spends many pages explaining how difficult it is to put figures on the economic effect of road improvements. It then spends many more pages analysing industries and applying percentages. However, the most important thing is that it concludes by stating that bringing the A82 between Tarbet and Fort William up to a 21st century standard would benefit the overall, net Scottish economy by £313 million. That is the good news. However, the report gives 2019 to 2039 as the time period for that benefit. If the A82 is not brought up to a 21st century standard until 2019, the western Highlands and Islands will have little economic activity to benefit from the improvement.The economic report tells us one story, but we should also consider the practical effects on business, social life and family life. Every time we make a journey on the A82—whether it is for an appointment or a flight, or to meet a customer's deadline—we have to accept that it will be a slow journey and build in a factor for possible hold-ups. For example, in coming to today's meeting, I am sure that we all built in an hour on top of the journey time. A recent incident closed the road for 12 hours. There are no simple diversions. In many places, there is no mobile phone coverage and no radio reception, so people do not get information on what is happening. Imagine that situation occurring on the M8 between Glasgow and Edinburgh, with all the lanes closed, no radio reception and the mobile phone network down. We live with such situations far too frequently.I turn to the personal side. As John Hutchison said, a fatality causes the road to be closed for a minimum of six hours. In many cases, the investigators have a two-hour journey from Dingwall, and nowadays the location of the incident is treated as a crime scene, so we can bank on the road being closed for six hours. The DVD includes a comment from Northern Constabulary that a fatality costs more than £1 million purely in police and inquiry time. There have been 22 fatalities on the road in the past three years. The cost of those is a third of the sum that we are asking to be spent on the road, and if that money had been spent earlier, 22 lives would have been saved.Those are examples of the immediate costs that we live with every day. As Alasdair Ferguson said, there are increased costs for the daily transportation of goods and services in and out of the western Highlands. There are increased costs for maintenance, insurance and additional fuel, and the time element is also important. You will find out from the DVD that Ian Cleaver, from the hotel in Tyndrum, diverts his vehicles so they take 25 minutes longer on every journey—50 minutes a day. He does that purely for the safety of his passengers and his driver. I ask the committee to consider the costs of that.The main industries of the western Highlands and Islands are fish-related industries, tourism, timber, retail and haulage, all of which depend to a greater or lesser extent on transport. When I use the word "transport" in the context of the western Highlands, I am referring only to the road and to ferries, because we do not have an excellent, every-half-hour rail service. There are other restrictions on rail. It is obvious that the fishing industry requires fast and reliable journeys to market, as it needs to get its product there as quickly as possible.There will not be a 50 per cent growth in tourism on the A82. Tourism requires safe and stress-free trips, which is what holidaymaking is all about. It is not about panicking on meeting one of Alasdair Ferguson's lorries on a bend on Loch Lomondside, particularly if you are an American who has got off the plane at Glasgow airport and is driving a right-hand drive car for the first time. The road is terrifying for those people. The timber and haulage industries require road infrastructure in order to comply with the working time directive, as every minute is counted nowadays. Such issues feature every day in relation to the A82.The population of the western Highlands and Islands has dropped by 4 per cent over the past 10 years, and it is forecast to drop by another 8 per cent in the period 2002 to 2018. Unless we do something, we will suffer both economically and from a population standpoint. There is a difference between accessible rural areas and rural areas. It has been proven that population growth in accessible rural areas increases at double the rate of the Scottish national average. In normal, inaccessible rural areas, population growth is pretty stagnant. There is demand from people who want to go to rural areas, but we on the west coast are not meeting it because of our infrastructure.

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Public Petitions Committee, 24 Jun 2008

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