YOUR VIEWS: A82 safety, the Kessock Bridge, play parks, boy racers, A9 dualling and the Highland League
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A mixed bag of comment and opinion from readers on a wide range of topics.
A82 must be made safer
A grandmother who lost four members of her family in an accident on the A82 renewed calls for improvements after biker Michael Gall (51) died near Invermoriston following a collision. Samantha Cousin lost son Rhys (25), his wife Gemma (26) and their daughters Peyton (3) and one-year-old Heidi in a crash just north of Fort William.
“I dread driving to Inverness from Fort William every Thursday. The road is busy with normal traffic , but when the summer time hits it’s diabolical to drive with cyclists and articulated lorries, people WALKING on this small road, tourists doing 30 miles an hour looking at mountains instead of stopping at our multiple lay-bys. I hear sirens every day heading north on the A82 or south on the A82 to multiple crashes. Something has to be done, it’s well overdue.” – Carol Ann Davies, Fort William
Happy times building bridge
The Kessock Bridge’s 40th anniversary continues to evoke memories for many of those involved in its construction.
“The contract for constructing the Kessock Bridge was awarded to the company I worked for at the time and I jumped at the chance to volunteer when the company posted a request for an engineer to start work there the following week. They wanted someone with the experience I had, and within days I was stood in the wheel house of a Dutch dredger on the Moray Firth 450 miles from my home in Yorkshire, ensuring that it kept to the line of a new shipping channel it was dredging between the proposed main bridge piers. The next job I had was to use a Ziess Distomat – one of the first to be used in the UK – to set up a base line with survey monuments at the Kessock and Inverness ends of the proposed bridge, each with a brass plate on top marked with a cross to an accuracy of +/- 5mm. The highlight of the whole project was a twice daily climb up a hill on the Black Isle end of the bridge to set up the distomat to position and give radio instructions to a construction supervisor on a pontoon floating on the Moray estuary as to when to release a tubular pile that was suspended from a crane. Each one of the 80 piles used to support the main bridge piers could only be released and subsequently driven to depth between high and low tides, otherwise any water movement caused the pile to move out of position as it dropped down to the sea bed – though it did take a few goes to get it right! As you can imagine, there was a lot of down time, what with the weather and sea conditions, though looking out at the beautiful countryside through the hatch of my isolated hut more than compensated for it. And I’ll always remember the dramatic cloud formations as rainclouds approached – yes, it was the most enjoyable project I have ever worked on!” – Dennis Granville Stone, Rotherham
Budgeting for play parks
Highland councillors were to discuss a strategy to bring the region’s 321 play parks up to scratch. Highland Council has no capital budget at all for play parks.
The council is required by law to maintain them, but has no statutory duty to provide them in the first place.
“The majority of new housing going up has no play parks included in the plans. Inverness is losing all its green space to housing, Also there are no facilities for disabled children to play. The council are saying they are short of money but they have just stated that they took in £1,000,000 in parking fines. Surely they can earmark some of this money to the parks. Inverness is an expanding city but the play parks are a disgrace. It is only a matter of time before there is an accident and a claim against the council.” – Angus Sinclair, Inverness
How to deal with boy racers
Courier columnist Charles Bannerman recently pondered what could be done to combat what he sees as a growing problem of “boy racers” in the city.
“Confiscate any vehicle over noise level, especially bikes, and crush then. They will learn the hard way.” – Douglas Riach, Bangkok
“There should at least be a community police officer for the affected community in Inverness, just so relationships between community and the police can run. It works here in Nova Scotia anyway.” – Judd Wilson, Halifax, Nova Scotia
Is A9 dualling the right thing to do?
Inverness MP Drew Hendry argued for the dualling of the A9 as a vital strengthening of Highland infrastructure.
“And that economic development, based on car travel, multiplied throughout the world, is just why we have a planet-wide global warming crisis; meanwhile the Scottish Highlands rail network remains undeveloped in its 19th century timewarp, amazingly still clinging to life because it remains the sane way to travel.” – Julian Roberts, Glasgow
“The completion of the A9 upgrade is a must. Convincing the central belt Scottish Government will be the hardest part to achieve.” – Lindsay Ritchie, Elgin
End of the road for league?
Nairn County manager Ronnie Sharp said players need to realise that the Highland League has gone with promotion and relegation both now in place.
“Certain clubs will pay for a crack at the fourth tier. Below, clubs will start to pay for promotion to the Highland League. Once they start in earnest, the round-robin will be replaced by automatic promotion/relegation. It is inevitable that the SFA will cave in to pressure.” – Harry Gaffing, Chester-le-Street
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