Over £1.5m to be spent improving Fife roads

Over £1.5m is to be spent on improving the roads in South West Fife.

Members of Fife Council’s South and West Fife area committee approved the annual roads programme which will see £1.056m spent on carriageways, £325,000 on footways and £189,000 on road safety traffic management.

Carriageway improvements will be taking place on the B981 Hope Street as part of a £327,780 project while £284,657 will be spent on work at Moray Way South and £117,308 on Park Road West in Rosyth.

In Saline, improvements costing £89,231 will be carried out in Upper Kinneddar and a £47,335 project will be undertaken on Loch Road.

Murrell Road in Aberdour will benefit from £46,367 of improvements.

One project, a £357,421 scheme which had been planned for Admiralty Road to Chapel Place in Inverkeithing, has been postponed due to a proposed active travel route.

Footway schemes will be completed Inverkeithing’s King Street and Hillend Road at a cost of £37,500 and £25,022 respectively, Dundonald Road and Laurel Road in Rosyth (£66,000).

In Saline, footway reconstruction will be carried out on Oakley at a cost of £73,895 while in Cairneyhlill, Glen Moriston Drive and Glen Clova Crescent will benefit from footway surface replacement costing £124,027.

To improve road safety, a pedestrian crossing will be provided in Harbour Drive at a cost of £60,000 while there will be footway realignment at Donibristle Primary on Morlich Road.

In Aberdour, £5,000 will be spent on a speed reduction sign for Main Street East while a pedestrian crossing warning sign will be put up under the Forth Road Bridge at Hope View.

Councillors also agreed to an extra measure which would see £5,000 spent on a feasibility study to look at ways of addressing speeding issues in Aberdour.

Cllr Patrick Browne said speed surveys had shown 62 per cent of drivers in Aberdour were driving over 25mph in a 20mph zone.

“Clearly it is a major issue of speeding. I think we need to go a bit further,” he said.

Committee convener, Councillor David Barratt, had his own ideas as to what could help tackle speeding traffic in Aberdour.

“Over the years we have proposed lots or different things and we have not quite got there,” he said.

“I have long advocated for speed activated traffic lights similar to those on the A75 in Dumfries and Galloway.

“They are fantastic. If you move more than the speed limit, they go red. Previous explanations we have had is they were a trial measure and not really tested and we were not able to employ them.

“I have had discussions since that they are extremely expensive to implement which surprises me. If we can have a flashing speed sign, it doesn’t sound like it should be that different.

“I don’t know if that could be part of the feasibility study of looking for different options for Aberdour.”

Following the meeting, Dalgety Bay and Inverkeithing councillor Dave Dempsey welcomed the decision to resurface Moray Way South.

“One of my long-term objectives is to get the whole of the main circuit in Dalgety Bay up to scratch,” he said.

“I’d managed to get some short sections into the programmes for previous years but much of Moray Way South remained in poor condition. If the Council carried on at its previous pace, it would take years to sort it all out.

“In the run up to decision day, I’d been lobbying for something more substantial, so I was pleased when it was agreed that the whole section from Doune Park to St Bridgets Roundabout was included in the coming year’s list.

“The work could still be some months away but it should now happen.”