So far we have received slips in Breakish Post Office of 36 of you who have posted a letter to Stewart Stevenson. We also so far have received 7 emails confirming they sent the letter.

This means at least 25% of all households in Breakish have sent a letter to the Transport Minister.

Many Thanks for that!

Chris

We got this coverage in the local paper this week:

We received the following letter from him:

Michael Russell will be doing an article on the road in this weeks West Highland Free Press

Seonachan

We got this response from John Laing:

From: John Laing - Member [mailto:john.laing.cllr@highland.gov.uk]
Sent: 15 October 2007 14:36
To: Dave Duthie; breakishoadpetition@eckl.org
Cc: Katy Cunningham; Sam MacNaughton
Subject: RE: A87 at Breakish, Isle of Skye

Dave

I am meeting on Thursday with Transerve to discuss various issues. I have asked that the A87 Breakish section improvements be included in our discussions.

John

From: Dave Duthie [mailto:dave.duthie@hitrans.org.uk]
Sent: 15 October 2007 09:39
To: breakishoadpetition@eckl.org
Cc: John Laing; Katy Cunningham; Sam MacNaughton
Subject: A87 at Breakish, Isle of Skye

Many thanks for your letter of 10^th October signed by six concerned local residents.  Traffic on the A87 ha, as you say, greatly increased in recent years as the Skye economy has improved partly due to the construction of the Skye Bridge and subsequent removal of tolls.

The management, maintenance and improvement of the A87 is the responsibility of Transport Scotland who’s management agent for your area is Transerve.

I would suggest you write to both organisations detailing your specific concerns regarding safety and ask to meet with them to discuss possible solutions.  It may be that if the case is accepted by both organisations that local improvement and traffic management works of the nature you require to improve pedestrian and cyclist safety can be undertaken as part of their ongoing programme of road maintenance.  I think it unlikely that a major realignment will be possible in the short to medium term given the limits on budgets and the priorities elsewhere on the trunk road network.

You indicate that school children have to walk along the A87 on a section without a footpath to access the school bus.  I would suggest that you contact the Highland Council to discuss this matter and they will assess, based on laid down criteria, if some action might be possible to alleviate your concerns in this regard,

Regards

Dave Duthie

We meet again to finalise the letters and sign the 8 letters from the steering group to the people who'd make a difference.

Here are the letters to the influential people:

These will be in the mail by tomorrow.

Here's the final version of the letter going out to the community. We decided we'll also add a preaddressed and stamped envelope to the mailing. We'll have the letter to the residents printed double sided and add the template to the Minister and the envelope and staple all 3 item together.

I'll print the letter 160 times. We'll also organise 160 envelopes and second class stamps.

Target date for preparing the mailing is Friday evening. The mailing should be distributed next week.

Seonachan is going to talk to the Free Press re an article.

All for now.

Chris

Hi Everyone,

Seonachan and I have been working on the wording of the letter to Stewart Stevenson, which I am adding as an attachment this email- Chris perhaps you could add it to the web site properly?

We also met up with John Laing and Hamish Fraser, Highland Council councilors on Saturday morning. They were both helpful and encouraging – the main things they suggested were

• That we should highlight in our letter the increased traffic volume on the A87 since the Skye tolls were removed, and that this volume may increase if the Uig – Lochmaddy ferry route is adopted as a pilot for the Road Equivalent Tariff  scheme
• That we should send a copy of the letter to various other key people such as the head of HITRANS etc (Seonachan has a list)
• That we should start sending letters to these key people as soon as possible. A report has been produced by HITRANS recently, and ministers are looking at it just now with a view to making spending decisions about various roads projects. Fortunately the Breakish section of the A87 is mentioned in the report, so this is an ideal time to bring pressure to bear on the decision makers
• That we should try to get the Free Press to write an article about the need for a road upgrade, preferably to coincide with the letter distribution.

Would it be possible for everyone to have a look at the draft letter and make comments?

Perhaps we could suggest a deadline for comments of Tuesday evening (16^th October)? If everyone is happy with it then, we could send off copies to the ministers and other decision makers straight away, and then distribute copies to all residents.

Look forward to hearing what you think,

Lis

Letter to stewart stevenspm

Please have a look at the following 3 documents. They represent the latest version of the letters:

To the Residents:

To the Minister

And separate return slips:

Thanks for Seonachan for finalising them.

Please let me have any feedback.

Chris

Seonachan spoke to Mike Jones an engineer with Hightrans, here is his report:

"I also had a good chat with Mike Jones the engineer with Hightrans who is responsible for the A87 maintenance.  There is a plan ongoing to put white lines at the brow of the hill at the old church. I asked him to try to put some at our hill and he will do what he can.

So I suppose that will take another 20 years! 

Seonachan"