MSP WELCOMES “LONG OVERDUE” END TO FIVE-YEAR “TEMPORARY” TRAFFIC LIGHTS ON A76

South Scotland MSP  Colin Smyth has welcomed the start to long overdue works to reroute a section of the A76 at Enterkinfoot away from an unstable embankment.

The stretch of the trunk road between Thornhill and Sanquhar has been controlled by temporary traffic lights for the past five years due to safety fears, with traffic reduced to a single lane during that time.

It’s over a year since the Scotland TranServ announced details of a £2.8m plan to realign the road away from the embankment but work is only now set to get started this week and is expected to last 30 weeks.

Colin Smyth said, “There will be a collective sigh of relief from regular users of the A76 that the five year so-called temporary traffic lights will soon disappear as the long overdue work begins to fix this road. This stretch has been down to a single lane for so-long that grass has begun growing on the closed lane. The government have the cheek to call this a road improvement project. If a lane had been closed on a trunk road in the central belt you can bet work would have started long before now. What we need to see is not just repairs such as this completed but serious investment in upgrading what is very much Scotland’s forgotten road.”