Councillor Paul Oldham in his latest newsletter brings us a wealth of information about what the Highland Council have been up to; "£108 million of cuts to come over three years," for instance. You can read his latest news letter here.
Via a couple of paragraphs and a couple of links he shows us what is planned for the top of the road on the B9092 and for Ardersier Port in general if all goes well.
Mnay readers will remember the days of the shifts clocking on and off at McDermotts and the large volumes of traffic that generated. It will be interesting to see how many jobs are created at the port but if we see similar volumes of traffic coming and going in the future it is hard to see how the A96 as it is presently constituted could cope without further long delays. Paul does say: "They also want to build a roundabout on the A96 at junction with the road down to the port but that will come later."
Of course in an ideal world there would be access to an all singing and dancing Nairn Bypass where the later roundabout might go making access to the Port a lot simpler. We do seem to be back in the realms of people suggesting that a by-pass will never be seen in their lifetime however. Last week in Holyrood Fergus Ewing asked the Deputy First Minister: "By what year will the contstruction of the Nairn by-pass be completed? He got a long answer talking about commintments etc but he didn't get a definite year date in response.
We live in interesting times and if you walk alongside the A96 on some of these still frosty days you get a good whiff of exhaust fumes in the air. A by-pass would be a really good thing to have.