Roads spending in Highland

[Nick Noble]

As I was driving to Brora for a meeting last night I could not help but think of how skewed the Highland Councils spending priorities for the Highlands road network are.

There they are currently deciding whether to spend £75 million which they don't have for the new Inverness City West Link Road, or whether they should just spend the entire £25 million they actually have for capital projects.

Now I admit that I only frequent Inverness two or three times per month, but I have never, not once, found the traffic congestion that bad in Inverness that I have thought, gosh, I wish there was a City West Link Road so I could avoid driving on "streets designed for horses and carts" as stated by the Provost Jimmy Gray at the launch of the new consultation.

What I often find my self thinking, as I did last night is "wouldn't it be good if the Highland Council spent of the £25 million they have available for capital projects on removing some of the particularly winding and twisting stretches of the A9 between Thurso and the Dornoch Firth, and added some overtaking lanes so that I can make this 54 miles journey in something less that the 1hour and 33 minutes it took last night as I had to follow an empty flat bed truck that hardly got above 40mph between Latheron and Helmsdale (and 22 mph for some bits!)

So just interested to know other peoples views.

Should the Highland Council look at areas outwith Inverness for some road spending, or should they continue to act like the Inverness City Council and fix a problem that does not actually appear to me to exist?