It’s the season of good will and when it comes to gifts, however small, it’s the thought that counts. So I suppose we should be grateful for the wee present the SNP slipped into our stockings on Monday morning, the quiet announcement that a hugely unpopular proposal to cut the national speed limit on single carriageway roads from 60mph to 50mph was being dropped.
The idea came about because some opportunistic anti-car smart alec decided to hijack a consultation on increasing the speed limit for HGVs from 40mph to 50mph, to increase travel times and reduce driver frustration from being stuck behind slow-moving trucks.
Of course it would be less of a problem if major freight roads like the A1, A9, A77 and A96 were fully dual carriageway, as they should have been decades ago, but it has taken a public consultation going back over a year and thousands of pounds, for the SNP Scottish Government to accept that, no, 60mph for cars is fine, and yes, trucks can go to 50mph.
The announcement came in a “Government Initiated Question,” where a government MSP puts up a pre-arranged soft query for a minister to answer, so there is no live statement to parliament or debate.
And there was another small crumb of comfort for motorists in Portobello on Tuesday, when councillors unexpectedly voted 5-4 in favour of rejecting the expansion of controlled parking. Hallelujah and hosanna in the highest.
So maybe we’re on a roll and other momentous decisions are about to be made, like improving the Sheriffhall Roundabout where the result of a full public inquiry which concluded over two years ago has still not been revealed.
The report is sitting there in Transport Secretary Fiona Hyslop’s in-tray, so go on, Fiona, give the go-ahead before you stand down in May.
From pot-holed local streets to snarled-up trunk roads, there are solutions aplenty but the hitherto reluctance of councils and the Scottish Government to grasp them is impossible to comprehend.
When speaking to people on their doorsteps, the state of our roads remains a top concern, and everyone can point to great canyons gouged out of nearby streets left unrepaired for months, if not years.
It doesn’t have to be this way. For example, the Road Mole machine can fill potholes in minutes, yet in Edinburgh the previous transport convener, the SNP’s Lesley Macinnes, ignorantly tried to dismiss it as social media fake news.
A UK company called Nu-Phalt has developed a road repair system which recycles the old surface and mixes it with a binder to lay a seamless new top. Faster and cheaper than traditional methods, yet Scottish councils won’t go near because with smaller crews the unions apparently won’t touch it, even though they could be retrained for a construction industry crying out for labour.
Even that could be overtaken by a new Norwegian system I’ve just come across, the Carbon Rover, a remote-controlled giant with only one operator, which chews up the old road but relays it with an eco-friendly biomass binder and claims to cut resurfacing costs by 70 per cent.
This year’s Scottish Government road maintenance budget is just over £1 billion, so imagine how much more could be achieved if the same work could be done for £30 million.
All we need for Christmas is more new thinking. And a new government.
