Transport bosses left red faced at A9 meeting
A boss of an under-fire transport quango was left red-faced after he missed the start of a meeting with Highland councillors.
Jonny Moran of Transport Scotland - which was heavily criticised after the Kessock Bridge was gripped by lengthy major traffic jams this week because of extended roadworks – was scheduled to speak about trunk road speed limits to the council’s own transport committee today (Thursday) at 10.30am.
Embarrassingly, Mr Moran and his colleagues who are based in Glasgow, were late for the presentation in Inverness and councillors were told by committee chairman Graham Phillips they had travelled "by train".
The agency has responsibility for Scotland’s trunk road network.
Mr Moran, who is the agency’s network operations manager, did not use the heavily criticised A9 which has been the subject of a long-running campaign seeking its dualling so the arterial trunk route’s journey times can be reduced and safety record improved.
It comes as frustrated motorists heading south along the A9 towards Inverness were caught up for over two hours in tailbacks this week.
When Mr Moran eventually did start his presentation 25 minutes late, he said health and safety issues meant the Kessock Bridge works on Monday (14.1) took longer than expected and contractors Scotland Transerv had apologised afterwards for the hold-ups, which left commuters stuck.
He said there had been a communication breakdown in conveying that information to the public and a review would carried into what went wrong.
The delays were caused because of preparations being carried out before a major road resurfacing scheme starts in February.
The southbound carriageway was reduced to one lane on either side of the bridge as essential weekend work on constructing a slip road continued beyond their proposed end time.
Highland Council leader Drew Hendry criticised the government agency and said it was a "real wake up call" ahead of next month’s works and talks between the two organisations are planned.
