Leader: By-pass is needed, but costs must be controlled

IT IS a major infrastructure project which has not yet been built but has already cost considerable sums of public money.

A familiar story, but this time we are not describing the ill-fated Edinburgh trams project but the Aberdeen by-pass, formally known as the Western Peripheral Route.

These are the facts. The 28-mile road, which has divided opinion in the north-east of Scotland, was approved by Scottish ministers in December 2009 after a lengthy public inquiry, but work on it has been held up by legal objections lodged at the Court of Session.

It has now emerged that some 113 million has already been spent on the project, which is designed to relieve the serious congestion problems which exist in and around Aberdeen, including 13m in the past 13 months.

This revelation has led the pressure group Road Sense to ask the pertinent question - which will resonate with a public wary of the escalating costs of grand projects - of how the money could be spent while the development has been halted by the legal challenge the group has launched.

However, the answer from quango Transport Scotland that it is normal for expenditure of this order to design, develop and promote a cost-effective scheme does, on balance, seem reasonable in the circumstances.

Despite the concerns of environmentalists there is undoubtedly a need for the by-pass but the authorities must keep control of the costs. The Aberdeen by-pass must not become a Tarmac version of the trams scheme.