A83 at the Rest and be Thankful shut for sixth day on safety concerns

It has been confirmed that after the latest review on Tuesday after shutting on Monday afternoon the road will remain out of action for the entire day.

When the crucial Highland's artery is shut, motorists are sent onto a single track route, the Old Military Road (OMR), which runs through the centre of Glen Croe and acts as a diversion using a convoy system.

After a review on Saturday, the road, which is a popular tourist through route,  remained shut, with reports of queues on the road as frustrated motorists tried to work out what was happening.

On Sunday the troubled stretch of road was re-opened under a convoy control from 10am only to shut again at 4pm with further weather forecast and hillside conditions due to be reviewed on Monday morning before any decision to re-open is made. The same thing happening yesterday.

Scottish Government-appointed maintenance firm Bear Scotland has said that decisions taken were the result of forecasts of rain and "high hillside saturation levels".

"Given the forecast for further heavy rainfall and the high hillside saturation being experienced because of recent weather, traffic will continue to be diverted onto the Old Military Road today and overnight," Bear Scotland spokesman said.

"Our team continues to have a presence on site and are monitoring conditions closely, and a further update will be issued if there is any change."

The traffic-free A83 on Tuesday.

In October the road was out of action for over seven days due to the continuing problems with the road and has been subject to short-term closures since. It was out of action for two nights in November for a new wave of maintenance works.

Campaigners have been long called for a full public inquiry to determine why road is still not fixed.

John Gurr, chairman of The Rest and Be Thankful Campaign, which has pushing for a swift permanent solution said there was frustration over the continuing disruption.

"This increases uncertainty for everybody. We need money committed for a more permanent solution," he said.

The A83 is an almost 100-mile trunk road connecting the Mull of Kintyre and southern Argyll to the shores of Loch Lomond.

About 1.3 million vehicles travel the route every year and it acts as an important transport link for mainland Argyll as well as the Inner Hebrides.

Another campaigner said that Transport Scotland needed to act to bring in more immediate solutions that stop the road from being closed.

"Nobody in Edinburgh seems to be paying attention to this and the issues have been there for years," he said. "Safety first is clearly important but really someone should be doing something about this.  This situaton really is beyond belief."

Moves over installing a series of catch-pits aimed at preventing road closures came after a landslip around 650 feet above the carriageway shut the road in August, 2020.

Catch pits are designed to ‘capture’ debris material from a landslip and prevent it from reaching the road.

Engineers said thousands of tonnes of debris including car-sized boulders slid onto the road after 100mm of rain hit the Argyll hills.

The slip ushered in a series of road closures for the important Highlands route which by January, 2021 had meant it was open for barely three weeks in the space of five months. In 2020 it had to be shut for over 200 days.

There has been criticism over millions being "wasted" over what is considered to be failed temporary fixes.

Two years ago officials said that it may take ten years for a permanent solution to stop landslides on the iconic Scots road.

The A83 at the Rest has been operating under a traffic lights system after a series of landslips over a number of years that have put the important Highlands route out of action for weeks at a time.

Argyll and Bute Council want a new replacement route within the life of the current Scottish Parliament.

But in November, hopes getting a swift permanent solution to fixing the road were dashed as ministers confirmed it may not be completed till 2033.

A campaign backed by 1500 businesses has been pushing for the scheme to fix landslip issues described by one MSP as a "dog of a project" to be delivered by 2024 after an over 15-year failure to prevent disruption.

But ministers have confirmed that the timescale for a permanent solution remains at between seven to ten years to complete after being approved.

And it has been confirmed that the preferred option is not expected to be approved till the spring of this year.

Transport Scotland has already established a preferred replacement route via Glen Croe.

There are currently five options on the table for the route, some of which include tunnels of up to 1.8 miles long. A tunnel option could take up to two years longer than the others.

In August, the Scottish Government announced a £25 million investment for design and development work for the route through Glen Croe.

The final award was given by the Scottish Government transport agency to a joint venture featuring Quebec-based consultants WSP and engineering and project management consultants Atkins, which is a subsidary of Montreal-based SNC-Lavalin.