Why has Borders been left in transport links limbo?
Published Date:
20 November 2008
Although promised "massive investment in roads" to compensate for Beeching's closure of our mainline railway between Edinburgh and Carlisle, we have received almost nothing and the A7 remains fit only for horses and carts in almost all of its length while the six miles at the southern end, in England, have recently been de-trunked.
We are right in the centre of southern Scotland, yet we have no railway and no motorway, nor even a dual carriageway. We have lost almost all of the textile industry for which Galashiels, Selkirk and Hawick were famous and even the "sunrise industries" that were supposed to replace the traditional tweed and worsted manufacturing have all gone. All of that can be directly attributed to the loss of our railway and the lack of a replacement motorway.
If that is not discrimination against the Borders, I cannot think what is. We are as Scottish as Aberdeen or Inverness but we get no investment in roads or bypasses. Even our capital city is barely accessible; you can hardly get to Auld Reekie from the Borders on many days of the year, whether it is winter snow or summer flooding that blocks the cart-track.
WILMA B GUNN
Halliday's Park
Selkirk
The full article contains 214 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
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Last Updated:
19 November 2008 8:11 PM
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Source:
The Scotsman
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Location:
Edinburgh
