SNP called on to avoid 'terrible and avoidable' A9 deaths
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The SNP’s failure to deliver on their promise – made in 2007 – to fully dual the A9 is a “betrayal of communities across Scotland” according to the Scottish Conservative shadow transport minister Graham Simpson.
Later today he will lead a debate on the issue in Holyrood where the Tories will call on the Scottish Government urgently to provide a revised timescale and costs to upgrade the “death-trap route” and guarantee regular progress updates.
The A9 is one of the most dangerous roads in the UK but the SNP is diverting “billions away from road-building” with “terrible and avoidable human costs” and has carried out only a fraction of the work it promised to have completed by 2025.
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The Conservatives are also calling for SNP ministers to disown the anti-car agenda of the Greens and finally get the dualling work underway “for the sake of local communities and to prevent the tragic and needless death toll from rising further.”
The Greens say the A9 needs safety improvements rather than dualling the entire route despite single carriageway being considerably more dangerous than dual carriageway.
Mr Simpson MSP said: “The SNP's abandonment of their commitment to dual the A9 by 2025 is a betrayal of communities across Scotland, who have been waiting for well over a decade for this essential upgrade.
“When transport minister Jenny Gilruth told MSPs recently that the SNP-Green Government had failed even to secure a contract for the Tomatin to Moy stretch, she was forced to admit that the timetable to complete the upgrade is ‘simply no longer achievable’.
“She was merely confirming what everyone already knew because only a tiny fraction of the work has been done since the SNP made their initial promise way back in 2007.
“A full 77 miles have yet to see any work undertaken – and now we don’t know the timescale, who will do it, or how much it will cost.
“This is not just an inexcusable delay to providing the facilities local communities urgently need for their daily lives, and on which the wider economy depends.
“It will also literally cost lives. Over the past three years, there have been more than 250 accidents on the road.
“Between 2018 and the end of last year, there were 21 fatalities, and those terrible and avoidable human costs will continue while the route remains in its present dangerous state.
“Under the influence of their fanatical anti-car coalition partners, the Greens, the SNP is diverting billions away from road-building, with enormous economic and human costs. It must immediately change course, and start to make good on the promise it made 16 years ago.”
