Direction of travel: The next Scottish Government will have big transport challenges

Last month, another person lost their life on the A9, this time in a collision between a van and a lorry. It is the most recent fatality in a long tally of deaths dating back decades on one of Scotland’s most dangerous roads. With the Scottish Parliament election now less than three months away, the long-awaited safety improvements from dualling the A9 have become one of the clearest tests of the SNP’s record on transport after 19 years in government.

According to Transport Scotland, which manages and maintains the country’s trunk road network, there were 10 fatalities on the road in 2024, and between 2010 and 2022, 72 people died on the Perth to Inverness stretch.

Laura Hansler, who is leading the campaign to complete the dualling of the A9, says “it is like Russian roulette” for those who rely on the road each day. She speaks on behalf of many families who have lost loved ones on the A9 over the years and says a “generational trauma” has been left with many people living in the communities along the route.

“You never know who is going to be next. It could be your neighbour, your friends or your own family,” she says.

Speaking from her home in Kincraig, which looks onto the A9, Hansler says that from the Easter school holidays through to the October break “you know there is going to be an exponential rise in the rate of road traffic collisions”. “At times, it has been weekly that we have lost people; sometimes it has been a couple of days between fatalities. And I hate to say it, it is not just the average fatality on the road, these are horrific head-on collisions.

“The rates of PTSD among the emergency services in these areas are absolutely terrible, and it is down to the RTCs on the A9.”

Figures published in a freedom of information request in January 2025 show that the overall number of RTCs on the A9 is not too dissimilar from other major Scottish roads. For example, between May 2021 and October 2024, there were 303 injury collisions on the A9 compared with 347 on the M8 in the same period, while there were 12 fatalities on the M8 and 27 on the A9. However, when this is put in the context of average daily traffic volumes – around 9,000 to 14,000 vehicles on the A9 compared with 78,000 to 109,000 on the M8 – it is clear that the A9 poses a disproportionately high risk to drivers.

Hansler is critical of many of the decision-makers at Holyrood who rarely use the road and says the level of RTCs and fatalities “would not be tolerated if it were the M8 or M9”.

In 2007, the SNP made it a manifesto commitment to dual the A9. It stated: “The case put forward by organisations including the AA Motoring Trust proves that a range of measures – including dualling of key roads, such as the A9 – would contribute to fewer lives being lost.”

Alongside this pledge were other major infrastructure projects, including the Queensferry Crossing, which is widely regarded as one of the SNP’s major successes in government over the past two decades.

However, the same cannot be said for the A9. In 2011 the Scottish Government formally committed to dualling the road between Perth and Inverness in full by 2025. Veteran MSP and former government minister Fergus Ewing says this pledge was a key selling point for Highland voters and played a decisive role in the SNP’s election victory in 2007.

Two decades on from the original manifesto commitment, and with just 11 miles of the 83-mile route dualled, the A9 remains a defining issue for voters across the Highlands, many of whom feel angry by the inaction as the next election approaches.

Ewing, who since leaving government has become one of the most vocal critics of the SNP’s handling of the project, says he first began to suspect the upgrade would not be delivered on time while he was still in office between 2018 and 2019. “It was perfectly clear to anyone that the deadline was not going to be met from a practical point of view,” he tells Holyrood.

Hansler recalls the roadshows held around this period, describing what was being promised as “shiny and jazz hands”. From her home, she can see a section of the road that has been dualled, yet in order to travel north or south, it narrows back to a single carriageway, a transition that is repeatedly linked to serious collisions.

“By 2016, I started to think it had all gone very quiet. I wasn’t hearing about the next section. Suddenly there was nothing – there were no conversations. We’d get these magazines twice a year telling us where the work was at, but it just dropped right off the peripheral of anyone’s conversations,” she says.

It was not until 2023 that the Scottish Government formally acknowledged its original plans were no longer viable. In a statement to the Scottish Parliament, the then transport minister, Mairi McAllan, made the announcement in December that year: only two of the 11 planned dualling sections had been completed, covering around 11 miles of the route.

“I was in government, so I bear some responsibility. I don’t shirk that,” Ewing says. Serving as business minister and later rural economy minister between 2011 and 2021, responsibility for the A9 did not fall within his portfolio. “I had no effective say beyond anyone else, but I do accept that I have an element of responsibility.”

Since returning to the backbenches, Ewing has become one of the loudest voices in Holyrood pressing ministers over the failure to deliver the project.

There is also a personal element for him. Ewing travels the A9 most weeks between his constituency of Inverness and Nairn and Holyrood, and he has lost two friends in separate accidents on the road.

In January he accused the government of “concealing advice” which suggested there was unlikely to be any funding available this decade to progress the procurement and construction phases of the A96 Nairn bypass.

According to information obtained through an FOI request, Ewing says Transport Scotland advised McAllan in March 2023 that “no funding has been identified to take forward the procurement and construction phases of the scheme”.

He claims McAllan, the current transport secretary Fiona Hyslop, and First Minister John Swinney “chose to conceal this advice from the public despite being urged to accept a duty of candour”.

Transport Scotland has rejected Ewing’s claims as “factually wrong”, stating that work to dual the bypass is already underway, while Swinney has insisted the government remains “absolutely committed” to delivering both the Nairn bypass and the dualling of the A96.

And last month Ewing accused the government of “a series of schoolboy howlers”, which led to the funding for the A96 being left out of the Scottish budget document, which finance secretary Shona Robison said was an error and later confirmed the government’s commitment to dual the road.  

It’s clear that for much of this parliament, messaging around the completion of the A9 and A96 has not converted to material progress. In December 2023, the government set the new target to complete the road by 2035, with 50 per cent being dualled by 2030. It has pledged £3.97bn of investment, based on April 2025 prices, to complete the road. In January, it set out its 2026 Delivery Plan and confirmed the remaining elements of the programme will be delivered using capital‑funded design and build contracts.  

And earlier this month, Swinney visited a section of the A9 between Tomatin and Moy, and said the project “remains a priority for myself and this government”. The visit suggests that the SNP knows this is an issue on the minds of voters along the 83-mile stretch.  

However, Hansler remains unconvinced by the Scottish Government and its new timetable to complete the dualling. “We have had timetables before. They have only managed to do 11 miles in 15 years. They are never going to dual 72 miles in the next 10 years.” 

Another transport issue that has dominated this parliament is the construction of the Glen Sannox and Glen Rosa ferries. The contract was awarded to Ferguson Marine in 2015, with the two vessels expected to be completed by May and July of 2018, and for an original fixed-price contract of £97m. However, after multiple delays, only Glen Sannox has been completed, while Glen Rosa is now expected to be finished by the end of this year. To make matters worse, the cost has soared to around £420m, and Glen Sannox has been out of CalMac’s fleet for almost a year with a cracked hull.  

The Scottish Liberal Democrats spokesperson for transport, Jamie Greene, who serves the region that the ships are destined to operate in, says the “ferry fiasco” has been “the number one issue that has grabbed attention” during this parliament.  

While the communities that rely on the Ardrossan to Brodick crossing wait for Glen Rosa’s completion and Glen Sannox’s repair, the number of passenger journeys on the route has plummeted by 150,000 in just three years.  

Last year, Labour MSP Katy Clark said several islanders had been in touch with her office to raise concerns about the viability of their businesses on Arran. She said: “Islanders have endured frequent delays and cancellations in recent years, and we are now seeing the devastating impact.  
“Tourism has long been the lifeblood of Arran. Now, visitor numbers are threatened with sailings being less reliable and even the visitor centre on the island is set to close due to Scottish Government cuts.”  

Ewing and Greene both think the Scottish Government under the SNP has forgotten about the rural and island communities when it comes to improving transport. “I don’t think government really cares about anything outside of the central belt, because that’s not where the voters are,” Greene tells Holyrood.  

As this parliament draws to a close in the coming weeks, the A9 and ferries have come to symbolise a broader question facing voters: can the Scottish Government’s long-term infrastructure promises be trusted?  

Labour, the Lib Dems, and the Conservatives all told Holyrood changes need to made to Transport Scotland and the way it is allocated funding.  

Scottish Labour’s transport spokesperson, Daniel Johnson, says over the next parliament, the Scottish Government will “have to take a look at Transport Scotland and its capabilities”. “We need to have much clearer spatial planning, looking at what economic assets we have and the infrastructure that links them,” he says.  

Sue Webber, the Scottish Conservative transport spokesperson, wants to reduce the average age of the ferry fleet, which is currently around 40. She makes the point that more of the ferries in the fleet were launched by Margaret Thatcher and John Major than by Nicola Sturgeon. She says: “At the moment we have rolling finance, which is the equivalent of one and a half ferries a year. But we wouldn’t say once the average age is brought down, let’s wait another 20 years before we invest in ferries. We would keep that programme going and give Transport Scotland the certainty that over a long period of time it can go out and do what it needs to do.” 

Greene says there is an “absolutely awful relationship” between CMAL, CalMac, and Transport Scotland, and he wants to see that improved over the next parliament. “None of it is joined up. About eight or nine years ago, I drafted up a report when I was on the Rural Economy and Connectivity Committee that called for the complete revamp of the trifecta. We advised years ago that this was a complete disaster and that something had to change.  

“The SNP promised they would fix it, but that hasn’t happened. And as we head into another election, the underlying problems are still there. There’s no joined-up approach to investment and long-term thinking.  

“The Lib Dems have agreed we will launch a ferries bill in the next parliament which would mandate the government to make long-term infrastructure decisions and big spending decisions would pass through parliament, as the Queensferry Crossing did.”  

According to YouGov polling published last month, transport is bottom of the list in terms of importance to voters ahead of the Scottish Parliament election. However, each transport spokesperson who spoke to Holyrood underlined that improving the transport network over the next parliament will be crucial to growing the economy, which is the number one priority of voters, according to the polling.  

The current SNP government has made it clear that transport is key to improving the economy. In September, a Scottish Government report stated that the sector alone is worth £10bn to Scotland’s economy. Commenting on that report, transport minister Fiona Hyslop said: “Investing in transport is investing in people. The wider impacts transport has on a number of factors – physical health, mental health, wellbeing, access to healthcare, education, jobs – is proof of that.” 

She pointed to free bus travel for under-22s, a key transport policy introduced during this parliament, and new infrastructure such as the Borders and Levenmouth Railway, the Queensferry Crossing and the Aberdeen bypass and how that has improved Scotland’s economy. 

However, Greene and Webber are critical of the knock-on effect of free bus travel for under-22s, and the government’s inability to complete key infrastructure projects on time, such as the ferries, the A9, and other roads that could be crucial for growing Scotland’s economy, like the A77.    

“The under-22 free bus passes have come out of the overall bus fund. That fund was there to subsidise lifeline rural routes that got people to school and the hospital. But that has been catastrophically slashed as a result. There’s no point in having a bus pass if there’s no bus to use it on,” Webber says.  

Greene gives the example of a crucial morning commuter link between Wemyss Bay and Glasgow that has been removed in recent years and has caused difficulties for people living in his region. “No one at Transport Scotland has sat down with real people and asked what time they go to work in the morning. Taking away the 10 past eight service has had massive knock-on effects for people who have childcare commitments, and there are people in that area who can’t get to work on time.  

“I live in quite a well-connected part of Scotland. If you live in a rural area or an island and your ferry has been off for three weeks, or the entire bus service has been cut, it has a devastating impact on your life. We basically have groups of people who can’t participate in the economy, and we need to change that.” 

Johnson pulls a map off the wall in his office and says he is using it to plan how a future Labour-led Scottish Government could use transport to improve the economy. “What makes Scotland special is the things we have in combination: an immense coastline with capacity for energy, agriculture and marine, wide open spaces for tourism, agriculture, and forestry, and an amazing concentration in the central belt that allows us to make everything from concrete in Dunbar to satellites in Clydebank,” he says.  

He adds, “the trick” is making those elements “work together”. “We are so trapped in this either-or when it comes to urban and rural Scotland. What gives us the opportunity to be competitive with other parts of the world are those fundamentals. Look at where all the ScotWind projects are. We need the Port of Nigg to be really active, and for that, we’ll need fabrication happening all over the country, so we need to ask ourselves how these things join up.”

As the parliament draws to a close, unresolved transport projects like the A9 and renewal of the ferry fleet define one of the areas in which the SNP must regain confidence as it seeks another term in government, while other parties aiming for a say in the next government must convince voters there is an easier road.