Here's now the final report.

From: Bob.Mitchell@transportscotland.gsi.gov.uk [mailto:Bob.Mitchell@transportscotland.gsi.gov.uk]
Sent: 28 December 2007 14:57
To: Chris Eckl
Cc: Sharon.McIlroy@transportscotland.gsi.gov.uk; Martin.Graham@transportscotland.gsi.gov.uk; Harvey.Kaplan@transportscotland.gsi.gov.uk
Subject: A87 Trunk Road, Breakish, Isle of Skye - Request for Provision of Footway

Dear Mr Eckl

Further to our telephone discussion on Monday 17 December 2007 I now enclose the up to date version of the Feasibility Report on the provision of the missing footway link at Breakish, which  Scotland Transerv prepared at my request.

As I explained when we spoke, my understanding is that the present lengths of footway to the east and west of the 'missing' section were provided by the Trunk Road Authority, after A87 became a Trunk Road, as part of a general road improvement which also widened the road and provided better road drainage. It appears that land was purchased to allow this work to be carried out. Such projects can take a considerable length of time between identification and construction, because of two factors: the land acquisition procedures, and the need to make available large sums of money, perhaps in excess of £1M, from relatively small budgets.  

When I received the initial request for provision of the 'missing link' footway from a local resident, earlier this year, I recognised that if a footway was to be provided relatively quickly the best solution would be to construct it within land already under the control of the Trunk Road Authority, and not as part of such a road improvement scheme.  Accordingly I asked Scotland Transerv to investigate the practicality of providing a footway within the existing road boundaries. The Feasibility Report  demonstrates that this is possible, but that a continuous footway could not be built on one side of the road only, without land acquisition. 

The current situation is that the principle of providing the 'missing link' footway at the locations indicated in the Feasibility Report, is agreed by Transport Scotland, and so the scheme has  been added to a list of similar minor improvements awaiting funding.

I can not however give any firm commitment about when this project can be funded. The preliminary estimate of cost is £220,000, which is a very large proportion of this financial year's total budget (currently £1M) for schemes like this, in the whole of the North West of Scotland contract area (Stirling to Thurso, and A9 westward to Uig).

Although it can not be guaranteed, if it is assumed that the same budget may be available in future years, the most likely funding arrangements would be that the cost be spread over two consecutive financial years.  However there are a number of schemes in the current year's programme which will require to be completed from next financial years budget, and it can not be guaranteed at this time that any funds will be available in 2008-09 toward this scheme. The detailed design will however be progressed during 2008. The earliest therefore that such an arrangement could be put in place would be late in financial year 2008-09, and early in year 2009-10, depending on funds being available at that particular time.

As I indicated when we spoke, the need to provide the requested footway is recognised and  the high level of interest and correspondence which the subject has generated from local residents is acknowledged.  As a result of this, I  propose to offer to attend a local Community Council meeting at some mutually convenient time in the Spring, to present information current at that time.

Whilst I do appreciate that there may be some local people who would prefer to see the footway completed on the south side only, there will be some to whom it will be a positive benefit to have it on both sides. However if, between now and detailed design being begun sometime in 2008, any appropriate landowners contact Transport Scotland offering to make land available by negotiation within a specified short timescale, I would be willing to instruct  that the feasibility of completing the link on the south side only, be examined.

If the current proposals are progressed, the treatment of areas where pedestrians will require to cross the road will need to be considered carefully and that will be part of the detailed design process. I will require that design to take account of current speeds through the community, and would hope that measures will be able to be incorporated which will help to reduce speeds from their current levels.   

I hope the above information, in addition to that contained in the Feasibility Study Report, is helpful. I believe I have covered all the issues we discussed last week, but please contact me again early in January if there is anything you believe is outstanding.

Yours sincerely

Bob Mitchell

Area Manager North

Transport Scotland

Trunk Roads - Network Management Directorate

Buchanan House

58 Port Dundas Road

Glasgow G4 0HF

tel 0141 272 7357

mob 07825011527

mailto:bob.mitchell@transportscotland.gsi.gov.uk

And here are the attachments:

Report Documents

We are trying to meet next week Monday to discuss. Meeting at 19:30 at Struanlea.

Chris

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

From: Lis Phillips

I phoned Stewart Stevenson’s office today. His staff reported that a reply to our letters is with the minister at the moment for him to sign and everyone who wrote should get a reply in the next 7-10 days. I asked if it was just an acknowledgement letter, and she said no, that it was a ‘considered response’, but would not divulge any more than that!

Cheers
Lis

We received a copy of a letter Dave Thompson MSP sent to Stewart Stevenson, the Transport Minister. In his letter he has taken all our arguments and reiterated them to the minister.

 Letter from Dave Thompson MSP

Until now Stewart Stevenson had all letters from the community (from more than 74 households) as well letters from politicians like Dave Thompson MSP, Malcolm Reed, from Transport Scotland and Charles Kennedy MP.

I'm sure he's just considering his response, but so far nobody has had any reply from him.

Chris

We received a response from Bob Mitchell, Area Manager of Transport Scotland.

 Letter from Bob Mitchell from Transport Scotland

I've asked him to forward us a copy of the preliminary study. This under freedom of Information should take no longer than 20 days.

Chris

In today's Free Press there is an other article about our petition and progress.

In the article Charles Kennedy in a statement to the paper again voices his disappointment that no progress has been made.

For the full article see here:

Article from West Highland Free Press from 9th Nov 2007

Thanks for the support of the West Highland Free Press, MP Charles Kennedy and all residents of Breakish who sent a letter to the Transport Minister. Now we are anxious waiting for the positive response from Stewart Stevenson.

Chris

So far we had notification from 74 households in Breakish that sent the letter to Stewart Stevenson the Minister for Transport in Scotland.

As we have about 160 households we now have 46% who sent the letter!

A lot of the letters are very personalised and raise the issues with the road from all the angles and viewpoints.

Unfortunately no one seems to have had any reply from the Minister yet.

Chris

We received a letter for Charles Kennedy. He has received a response from Malcolm Reed from Transport Scotland. He says it's identified for action but no guarantee given.

Malcolm Reed has copied his response to the Transport Minister Stewart Stevenson.

Letter attached:

 Letter C Kennedy

As far as we are aware, no one has so far received a response from the Transport Minister Stewart Stevenson on this issue.

Chris

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"