Bus Partnership Fund Projects

Millburn Corridor Bus Priority and Active Travel (STAG Appraisal)

Overview

We have commissioned Stantec to undertake a multi-modal transport study (following the Scottish Transport Appraisal Guidance (STAG)) to appraise and develop active travel (walking, wheeling and cycling) and sustainable transport (bus) options for the Millburn Road Corridor in Inverness.

The study is being undertaken in partnership with Sustrans and Transport Scotland, and is part funded through Sustrans’s ‘Places for Everyone’ funding and Transport Scotland’s Bus Partnership Fund (BPF).

The aim of Places for Everyone is to create safer, more attractive, healthier places by increasing the number of trips made by walking, cycling and wheeling for everyday journeys. The BPF seeks to invest in bus priority measures to reduce private car use and increase bus patronage.

Recent changes across the policy landscape, most notably around climate change, provide a focus for implementing transport solutions which help contribute towards lowering carbon emissions from transport. The publication of the Scottish Government’s updated Climate Change Plan in 2020 set out revised climate change targets and associated measures including:

• reducing car kilometres by 20% by 2030
• phasing out the need for petrol and diesel vehicles
• supporting transformational active travel projects

Furthermore, the Reducing car use for a healthier, fairer and greener Scotland (2022) publication outlines the route map to achieving the 20% reduction in car kilometres by 2030, and describes the key sustainable travel behaviours which make up the framework, including investing in the public transport and active travel networks. Scotland’s National Transport Strategy 2 (NTS2), published in 2020 presents the ‘Sustainable Travel Hierarchy’ and ‘Sustainable Investment Hierarchy’, which together guide decision making by promoting walking, wheeling, cycling, public transport and shared transport options in preference to single occupancy private cars. This strong underpinning policy context offers opportunities for successfully developing and implementing sustainable transport schemes.

The Inverness area is continuing to expand (in particular the Inverness East development to the east of the A9), however, travelling by car remains the dominant mode. This will subsequently increase congestion and transport emissions, and also impact on bus operations, with buses travelling in general traffic due to a lack of any priority.

Raigmore Hospital is a major employment site with existing traffic congestion issues within the site which impacts on buses serving the hospital, affecting staff, patient and visitor access. There are traffic issues associated with the level crossing on Harbour Road and the impact this has on traffic on the Millburn corridor is also an issue. The quality and accessibility of bus stops along the corridor are also lacking and inconsistent.

In terms of active travel provision along the corridor, there are a range of existing issues with the current shared path provision alongside the southern carriageway, and a need to ensure provision clearly connects with other active travel provision to ensure seamless and coherent connectivity for those travelling on foot or by bike.

The study is currently developing a range of active travel and bus based improvements to the corridor to address the existing problems.

Tell us what you think

A range of active travel and bus-based improvements to the corridor to address the existing problems have now been developed and are currently being appraised against a range of criteria. To feed into this appraisal we invited you to visit and fill in a feedback survey. This survey is now closed and we thank all who participated. Your feedback is important as your comments will feed into further detailed appraisal and design work currently being progressed.

The information on the study was presented at an in-person public drop-in event at the Spectrum Centre, Farraline Park Bus Station, Inverness on Wednesday 14 December 2022 where members of the study team were available to answer any questions from the public.

Updates

Last update: 23 January 2023