Amey joins Scottish road safety scheme

Amey has offered its support to a major initiative designed to tackle the issue of improving safety on the A77 – one of Scotland’s most notorious trunk roads.

Amey has been appointed as main contractor on five contracts, worth £20m, to carry out engineering improvements along the route south of Ayr. Work will start in winter 2005 and should be completed by summer 2006.

Sixty-eight lives have been lost, and there have been more than 320 serious accidents over the last 10 years on the Malletsheugh to Cairnryan stretch of the A77.

And although not on the A77, Amey itself has lost two workers in road incidents this year: the first on the M8 near Easterhouse, Glasgow, on 5 March; the second on the A38 Plymouth Parkway in mid-February.

Now the contractor has teamed up with the Scottish Executive, Strathclyde Police and South Ayrshire Council to become a member of the A77 Safety Group.

The group will carry out a year-long programme of activity including education initiatives and a community awareness publicity campaign.

Significant resources have been committed by the Scottish Executive to help achieve the aims of the group, including stumping up the £20m for Amey’s engineering improvements.

In the immediate term, the group intends to install vehicle activated signs, which will advise drivers of potential hazards, as well as their own excessive speed.

The group is also considering the feasibility of installing Scotland’s first SPECS speeding deterrent system on the A77, between Bogend and Girvan. SPECS uses pairs of digital safety cameras that provide point-to-point speed enforcement, based on the calculation of drivers’ average speed between the two cameras.

Scottish transport minister Nichol Stephen said: "The Scottish Executive is committed to improving this route to tackle the unacceptably high number of accidents on this stretch of road. 

"However, improvement schemes and more proactive policing are not the only ways to reduce speeding and accident concerns. Every driver and member of the public who uses the road and footpaths has their own part to play."

The A77 Safety Group has opened a press office to provide rapid response to media enquiries, 24-hours a day, 365-days a year.

The group’s website, which will detail how Amey’s work is progressing, is under construction and is scheduled to be launched next month.