Jambuster to put brakes on roads chaos

Published on Sunday 28 May 2006 00:24

A ROADWORKS tsar with wide-ranging powers to veto or delay ill-planned highway closures will be appointed within months, Scotland on Sunday can reveal.

From the start of 2007, utility companies who break the strict new standards will be hit with 5,000 fines, and badly- affected stretches of highway could be declared roadworks-free for years.

Last night, roads minister Tavish Scott expressed his own "despair" at the constant traffic chaos caused by firms repeatedly digging up the same stretches of highway.

Scott said one of his top priorities over the next year would be to make sure the new office of Scottish Road Works Commissioner cracked down hard on shoddy, delayed or duplicated road digging.

The roadworks commissioner's post will be advertised within weeks and an appointed later in the year. The successful candidate will assume full legal powers on January 1.

The rights of the commissioner, whose office will cost an estimated 300,000-a-year to run, include:

• Ordering a delay or veto on poorly-planned roadworks;

• Fining companies that fail to complete work on time or to the required standard up to 5,000;

• Ruling out roadworks on certain routes for up to three years;

• The right to be notified of, and scrutinise, every road-digging project in Scotland;

• Minimising the impact of roadworks by insisting that they may only go ahead at night or at weekends, or must be completed by a specific date;

• Intervening whether a complaint has been received or not.

Each year, Edinburgh's roads are dug up 11,500 times. Glasgow's roadworks blackspots include the Great Western Road in the north of the city, which weary drivers claim is usually affected by roadworks somewhere.

Such is the concern about the quality of the 23,000 roadworks across Scotland's biggest city, that the council has appointed a team of undercover inspectors to flag up shoddy work.

Aberdeen's roads are dug up 7,000 times a year, with particular problems along the A90 between Newtonhill and Portlethen.

Scott said: "If you're a telecommunications company trying to wallop in fibre-optic across a particular town and you don't co-operate with Scottish Power, or with whoever is putting in pipes at the time, the commissioner will be able to say: 'Sorry, you can darned well wait until you do agree with this,' and that's a good thing in my view.

"We hope to bang some heads together and to try and make sure these things are done at the same time.

"The commissioner must get on and do the job. That's going to be his or her absolutely primary task. The transport minister of the day will take a very close interest in how this progresses."

Scott cited an example of recurring road works just a few yards from where MSPs used to have their offices at the top of Edinburgh's Royal Mile, which has frequently been resurfaced in recent years.

He said: "I noticed while walking around Edinburgh they had dug up the road at the Bridges. When we were up the road they had brought in contractors to put cobbles there and it was lovely, it looked great, and now they're digging it up again. I despair."

Another roadworks hotspot is the Lanark Road, linking the Edinburgh suburbs of Currie and Balerno to the city centre. Gas mains-related works which began in March and were supposed to have finished by the start of May will drag on into next month.

To the frustration of many motorists, another set of roadworks has started just a few hundred yards away, with predictable results.

An Executive source said this was typical of the chaos it hoped the new commissioner would crack down on.

"We would want some pretty detailed answers about why something like this was taking so long," said the source.

Neil Greig, head of policy with the AA Motoring Trust in Scotland, said: "We welcome this, although we do wonder why it is taking so long. We have been hearing about plans to clamp down on long-running roadworks for years now."

A spokesman for the employers' organisation the CBI in Scotland, said: "I think anybody who has endured roadworks will welcome this. I hope this commissioner manages to make a difference."