MSP criticises link road plan
A Green MSP has raised concerns about Stirling Council’s proposals to build the Viewforth Link Road after viewing the plans at the council chambers.
Mid Scotland and Fife MSP Mark Ruskell was a critic of the scheme when he was a Stirling councillor.
He claims the proposal is based on unchallenged, inaccurate presumptions about traffic volumes in the city.
The scheme would involve the construction of a new road, linking Burghmuir Road with St Ninians Road, running from the existing roundabout at the Burghmuir Road/Linden Avenue junction.
It would go through part of the existing Linden Avenue car park, using a cutting to access the hill running up to the now razed site of the former New Viewforth council building and ending at a junction with St Ninians Road and Snowdon Place.
“The Viewforth Link Road remains a costly white elephant that will turn King’s Park into the corridor of a major distributor road,”said Mr Ruskell.
“While suggested traffic calming measures around Dumbarton Road and Upper Craigs would be welcome, improving the attractiveness of the town centre, these are not part of the current planning application.
“There is no guarantee that any of these measures will come to fruitionand if the council was serious about traffic reduction they would put traffic calming in ahead of a decision on the need for any distributor road.
“Successive Labour, Tory and SNP administrations have failed to challenge the logic behind this link road with concerns from communities dismissed out of hand during every Local Development Plan consultation. The site of the demolished New Viewforth building remains abandoned, developers would be queuing up to build here if there wasn’t a distributor road slap bang in the middle of the site. The council can ill afford to be throwing such valuable housing land away based on out of date assumptions about future traffic growth.”
The link road is central to a wider series of proposals by Stirling Council to transform the way people move around the Torbrex, King’s Park and Braehead areas of Stirling by foot, bike or vehicle.
Stirling Council recently carried out public consultation events and further information is available online at: www.my. stirling.gov.uk/services