IT is not only France which has better provision for roadside rest and overnight parking (“Plan for motorhomes to carry on camping… but French style”, The Herald, October 16). Several years of campervan travel in many European countries, from Belgium to the northern tip of Norway, has demonstrated to me that every country on the other side of the North Sea is better that the UK in its provision of facilities associated with the road network. Once I am over the water I know that good places to stop, free of charge, will be available every 20 minutes or so. They will all be well separated from the traffic, many with picnic benches and toilets and, less frequently, include regular service stations with full café, fuel and waste disposal provision. My 2020 Complete Europe road atlas shows what to expect: a green triangle for a rest area with limited services, a black triangle for the full range.
So Highland Council is to be congratulated in its determination to expand the existing facilities beside the A9 just north of Inverness by the Kessock Bridge. It should be an exemplar of what is required across most of the Scottish road network. This requires strong leadership from the Scottish Government. It is well placed to learn not only from new ideas in the Highlands but also from decades of experience in continental Europe. But the starting point for the Government must be a rethink of the parking facilities currently being built as part of the A9 dualling project. What is being built today, immediately north of Perth, for example, is pathetic – a parking facility fit for the 1960s, completely inadequate for today’s requirements.
Transport Secretary Michael Matheson needs to issue new instructions to his officials. Every existing or potential lay-by on the A9 should be examined to see which ones can be expanded over the adjacent ground to provide continental-standard parking and rest facilities. And we all need to realise that the reason why Scotland does not have these facilities already is because of landowner pressure. Landowners and their highly paid lawyers have resisted the loss of land to meet such wider public needs, with too many feeble politicians caving into this pressure. Today the message from the Scottish Government to the landowners must be “enough is enough – these rest and parking facilities will be built, to the highest European standard, within a few years”. Any landowner who refuses to make the essential land available should find that they are subject to the early application of compulsory purchase powers by the relevant roads authority. Politicians, both local and national, need to grasp the thistle and deliver, without any further delay.
Dave Morris, Kinross.
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