Tesco has warned that Highland Council’s plans to improve a major traffic bottleneck in Inverness will cause gridlock all over the city.
The council is trying to make improvements at the Inshes roundabout, one of the region’s most notorious junctions.
Its proposal to improve waiting times is currently working its way through the planning system.
But it has already attracted 17 objections, including one from supermarket giant Tesco.
And according to a statement from ECS Transport Planning – a Glasgow-based firm hired by Tesco to examine the council’s plans – things could be about to get a whole lot worse.
The supermarket is also claiming it will seek compensation from the council if its business is hit by the changes.
Why is the Inshes roundabout such a problem?
Fixing the Inshes roundabout has been on the council’s to-do list for a long time.
The junction’s wacky road markings and six exits have made it well-known in the city for all the wrong reasons.
But it is hoped that a new layout will reduce congestion and cut journey times.
According to planning papers lodged by the council in January, work will start at some point in 2024.
Once it is done, only four exits of the roundabout will remain and traffic lights will be installed.
There will also be three new entrances built away from the roundabout for Police Scotland’s Highlands and Islands headquarters, Drumossie Avenue and Inshes Retail Park.
But the main difficulty with the proposal is that it won’t make all the problems just disappear.
The council’s planning department have said so themselves.
Principal engineer Gary Smith summed up the situation before a public consultation opened in May 2021.
He said: “The work that we are doing at Inshes roundabout will not solve congestion in Inverness or congestion through Inshes roundabout.
“What the work will do is make journey time and journey reliability much better.”
What has Tesco said?
Mr Smith’s summation doesn’t sound particularly promising.
But if it does improve reliability, that is a step in the right direction.
However, it seems that Tesco does not see it that way.
Council planners have provided estimates for how long it would take to travel between set points nearby.
It compares its preferred option with leaving things as they are for each year between 2024 and 2037.
In a seven-page statement objecting to the council’s proposal, Tesco says the preferred option would leave customers “stuck in the car park for hours”.
It reads: “There are more than 300 vehicles queuing within the retail park in 2037, which is more than a mile of queuing vehicles in theory.
“Clearly this would be significantly worse. The car park would be gridlocked and customers would be stuck in the car park for hours.
“The results of the preferred model indicate a queue in excess of 6km (3.8 miles) from the Inshes roundabout, which will extend beyond the River Ness to the west.
“This will result in the majority of the West Link being gridlocked during peak period, which is completely unacceptable.”
The next steps
The statement from ECS also questions how the council’s conclusions were reached.
Several other objections have also been raised. Many of them focus on the effect the changes will have on the Drakies estate.
Marya Meighan is one of several people concerned that Drumossie Avenue will become a rat run.
She said: “Surely there must be another option? Or employ somebody better at their job to come up with an alternative to this before our lovely street is ruined and our children are hurt.”
The council’s proposal will be discussed by its planning applications committee at some point – likely to be later this year.
According to Highland Council’s principal planner Tim Stott the area around the Inshes roundabout is the most congested section of the north’s road network.
In a recently published document about the plans, he said: “The proposal is a transport scheme to provide some relief of existing congestion, and reduce existing road
user conflicts, along Inshes Corridor.
“The scheme will also minimise the projected future increase in that
congestion and maintain better road user safety than the ‘do-nothing’ approach of leaving the corridor unaltered.”
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