Steven Ferguson on A9 dualling

For first team – 25 away trips and 10 hours per trip so 250 hours. That’s just first team games and doesn’t include meetings, mandatory events that our club and players have to attend in the central belt. Our supporters obviously travel either by supporters bus or cars to the same away games as the first team. Our Academy will have 40 away trips over u11,12,13,14,15,16 age groups and our u18s will have 12 away trips per season. Like our supporters parents and families supporting their child will normally travel by car to these fixtures.

The main issue for us travelling the A9 regularly will be the same as for any other individual/family/business living and working in the Highlands that travel the A9 on a regular basis and that is safety. For us, a premier league football club with a first team and academy playing in a national games programme we have no option but to travel the A9.

The A9 being closed is a regular occurrence and causes concern as for the road to be closed we know its serious, so with staff, supporters and families travelling it is definitely a worry, I will say all our thoughts are firstly with the poor people that are involved before any issues we have with travel arrangements.

Concerns are raised regularly Internally, especially when travelling in adverse weather conditions, the challenge of seasonal ‘tourist’ traffic and evening kick off’s. I think anyone that travels the A9 will see at least one accident or near miss every trip which is a crazy statistic. There has been some horrendous accidents that sadly has resulted in to many people losing their lives.

The same issues and concerns we have are exactly the same for opposition teams, staff, families and supporters. We see, and ICT will be the same, a significant drop off from central belt clubs supporters & academies travelling to the Highlands in the winter and the reason is always around concerns travelling. There should definitely be a focus on the accident hot spots as the stats will be able to show but the issue wont completely go away until the full stretch as been addressed and provide consistent driving conditions.

I accept that dualling between Perth and Inverness cannot not take away human error but the risk of accidents will reduce hugely. Dualling would simplify the drive, reduce travel time and frustrations and manage the heavy ‘visitor’ traffic going north and south on a daily basis and again reduce the chances of a full road closure.