You may have read my opinion piece the other day about the A9. The thrust of it was that the Scottish Government is committed to dualling the road for all the wrong reasons and that the changes which the upgrade might, or might not, bring about do not justify the cost. I also asked readers to email me their thoughts on my arguments, and they did. It wasn’t pretty.

One person, I’m pleased to say, emailed in to say that my piece was “wise” – just the one though. Mostly, it was criticism and abuse which is fine. I was “selfish”, I was a “smart-alec journalist”, I was a “central-belt Heh Jimmy”, and I didn’t understand what I was talking about because, they said, I don’t live in the Highlands or regularly use the A9. A few people claimed I’d quickly change my mind if I ever saw an accident on the road.

So here’s my reply, if I may. First of all, for the record (he said a little huffily) I do regularly use the A9 and have done for years – my granny’s from Thurso and I have family and friends all over the Highlands including in Inverness. It means I’ve been on the road when it’s been fine and I’ve been on the road when it hasn’t been fine, mainly because of slower-moving traffic or roadworks, sometimes the dualling roadworks. So I know the road well and yes, I know there are issues.

I also think some of the readers who emailed in got it wrong, if I may say so, when they said I avoided the main arguments in favour of dualling. Everyone appears to accept the point that it won’t cut journey times significantly. But a couple of people said I avoided the fact that it wasn’t about speed, it was about reliability; in other words, after dualling, you’ll be more likely to know when you’ll arrive.

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If that happens, it’ll be a good thing of course, particularly for businesses, but in fact I did not avoid the reliability argument, I suggested that anyone who thinks dualling the A9 will make it significantly more reliable clearly needs to take a good look at other dual carriageways. One reader told me the dualled A9 would make it easier to travel between the south and Inverness in the same way the M8 makes it easier to travel between Glasgow and Edinburgh. But if I may reverse the central-belt-Heh-Jimmy argument, I think you’d only say that about the M8 if you don’t live here. In fact, some people are arguing we should add another lane to the M8 because, as with the A9, some people think the only solution to “too many cars” is “more road”.

Which takes us to the issue of safety. I understand the concern – an emailer told me that every time her grown-up children use the A9, she has a sense of dread until she knows they’ve arrived safely. I also apologise if people think I was dismissing the issue lightly. That wasn’t what I was trying to do; I’ve seen the most recent figures from the government, and they show 22 deaths on the A9 from 2020-2023.

All I was trying to do was suggest a couple of things, the first of which is that making a road dual carriageway will not necessarily vastly reduce the number of accidents and collisions. Indeed, of the 313 collisions that occurred on the A9 in 2020-2023, 114 of them were on the dual carriageway sections of the road. At least one reader (thankyou Mr Duncan) also agreed with me that dualling the A9 will not get rid of impatient and aggressive drivers, or drivers who make a mistake; accidents will still happen as they happen on other roads in Scotland, dualled or non-dualled.

(Image: The A9)

The question then is one of proportion: do we think that the reduction in accidents on the A9, which is likely to be relatively small, is enough to justify the projected cost? (it’s currently £3bn but no one really believes that figure). Some might say one life saved is enough to justify the cost but that’s not how public policy works: we accept, because we need them, that roads come with risks and we also accept that measures to reduce those risks – speed cameras, limits, dualling – are balanced against the costs. There are many things we could do to reduce accidents but we don’t do them because they’d be too expensive or would have a negative impact on drivers. Same for the A9.

I do not think this is a selfish, central-belt argument – I would say the same about roads round Glasgow and Edinburgh. I also don’t think the readers who emailed in dealt with my central point which is that, even if dualling the A9 improved things, it wouldn’t be for long. You may remember I talked about being shown round the Queensferry crossing in 2017 and being told how it would ease congestion but how the crossing actually led to extra car journeys. And it’s because that’s what roads do: they promise to make things easier and perhaps in the short term, they do. But in the long-term: no.

So apologies to all the readers who got a bit wound-up by the piece the other day and I hope you won’t mind my final prediction. We’re 20 or 30 years from now. The A9 has been dualled. It’s cost £3bn or 4bn or 5bn who knows. Accidents are still happening, it is no faster than it was, and there are still delays because there’s more traffic. You may say that’s not what’ll happen – we’ll have to wait 20 years to find out. But the history of our roads tells us it will. Which only leaves one question: is it all worth it to get nowhere?