Thanks to the West Highland Free Press who again picked up our story and featured it on the front page. They also contacted Transport Scotland and got a similar message that the funding needs to be spread over 2 budget years. They therefor got the message it will take until 2010 before the footpath becomes a reality.

Thanks to Michael Russell from the Free Press!

Here's the picture:

Taken from Breakish Road Footpath Petition: Free Press Pictures

And here's the article:

Click here to read it

Have a Merry Christmas and we'll pick up the pressure in the New Year

Chris

Hi There

Just had Bob Mitchell from Transport Scotland on the phone. He wasn’t happy that we had the survey without him having reviewed it trough my Freedom of Information request and ask me to destroy my copies. If you downloaded it could you also please do so.

He will send the right version with plans this week. And he’ll add a letter explaining his thinking of the options.

He spent some time on the phone explaining the various options and his budget constraints and was also saying that our pressure through elected representatives and press is helping it compete with other projects (so we need to keep this up).

On the options he was explaining that he asked for a study that would not require any lot of land purchases so this option certainly would not be the “widen the road and put a footpath on the south side” option as this would be a multi million pounds project. The option he’s proposing would involve crossing the road 2 times and a footbridge (details will be in the plans when they come). This option would be around £250k and would soak up most of their yearly maintenance budget for the whole network (?). The big option would come from a different budget (road improvement rather than maintenance) but that’s less likely to happen as quickly as the small option.  He also wanted to come up to Skye nearer to the project to speak to the community and explain.

The Footpath would be 1.5m wide and have a hard (not loose stone) surface so would be suitable to cyclists as well (but not shared with a divider line).

He acknowledged the problems with the road and mentioned they probably didn't finished the project at the time due to the vertical challenges in this middle bit. He mentioned the double white line that has been added and I told him that this would not be the only place where a double white line would be needed (you know where our exit is !!). He told me he'd follow this one up, too.

His thinking was that (my interpretation) if we keep up the pressure through elected representatives it’ll get the budget in the next financial year (from April 2008) but might be split into 2 budget years (so might not be finished until 2009).

Well I think at least the FoI and the pressure got him moving.

Let’s hope for the best.

I think next step is a steering group meeting so we can discuss how we keep the pressure up.

Chris

We have at the beginning of December received a response from Transport Scotland. This is seemingly the response from the Minister through Bob Mitchell the Area Manager. From feedback I also heard the same letter went out to everybody who wrote in (seemingly without going into details about the individual concerns voiced).

Read the response

This week we should be receiving the preliminary study. I've also asked them if there were any studies done when the original part of the footpath was built so let's see what this brings up, too.

Chris