Submitted by Bill Fernie
16th August 2026
There is something slightly uncomfortable about the way Scotland talks about road investment.
Billions are being committed to transforming the A9 between Perth and Inverness, yet once we look north of Inverness, the conversation seems to become much quieter. People in Caithness have watched roads deteriorate so is the huge expenditure on the A9 south of Inverness to blame or not. Lets take a look.
The Scottish Government now puts the cost of the Perth–Inverness A9 dualling programme at £3.97 billion at April 2025 prices. The programme covers 83 miles and is intended to turn the entire route into dual carriageway by the end of 2035.
In June 2026, the Government announced a further £1.94 billion framework to deliver the remaining approximately 58 miles of the programme yet to enter procurement.
Nobody can dispute that improving the A9 between Perth and Inverness has potential benefits. It is a dangerous and frustrating road in places, and better reliability and safety are reasonable objectives.
But there is another question that we in th north are asking. What happens to Scotland's roads once you get north of Inverness?
For people in Caithness, Sutherland and the far North, the A9 is not the end of the journey. It is the beginning of the final part of it.
The A9 doesn't stop being important at Inverness it is still a long way home to Thurso or Wick.
For someone travelling from Caithness to Perth, Edinburgh, Glasgow or central Scotland, improving the southern part of the A9 is undoubtedly useful.
But imagine the journey from Wick.
Even after the Perth–Inverness dualling programme is complete, the journey north of Inverness will still involve long stretches of single carriageway.
There is no comparable £4 billion programme waiting to transform the road network from Inverness to Wick and Thurso.
And that matters economically.
Caithness is trying to attract investment into energy, engineering, tourism, agriculture, fishing, food production and the emerging opportunities around Dounreay and the Pentland Firth.
Businesses don't operate on an island although Caithnss has often been likend to one.
They need employees to travel, goods to move, tourists to arrive, machinery to be transported and suppliers to reach them. A good road network is part of the economic infrastructure.
But perhaps the bigger issue is maintenance and his is where I think the debate needs to move beyond dualling.
A road doesn't have to be dual carriageway to be economically useful.
But it does need to be maintained properly and that means asking some fairly basic questions about the roads north of Inverness.
How much is being spent maintaining them and how much is being spent resurfacing them?
How many kilometres are being resurfaced each year?
How many sections have been identified as requiring major treatment?
How does the condition of the A9 north of Inverness compare with the A9 south of Inverness?
And perhaps most importantly:
Is there enough money being spent on maintenance to prevent today's roads becoming tomorrow's expensive reconstruction projects?
These questions are particularly important because Transport Scotland itself recognises that Scotland's trunk-road network faces increasing pressures from flooding, extreme weather and other climate-related risks.
Dualling and maintenance are not the same thing and
There is an important qualification here as it would be wrong to suggest that the £3.97 billion A9 dualling budget could simply be redistributed to roads in Caithness.
The dualling programme is a major capital project with its own funding arrangements.
Routine and planned maintenance of the trunk-road network is a different matter.
Transport Scotland also says that the A9 programme is intended to improve safety, reliability and resilience as well as journey times.
That makes the maintenance question even more interesting because reliability and resilience aren't just created by building new roads.
They also depend upon keeping existing roads in good condition.
Lets get into a thrny question - What about the road surface?
Anyone regularly driving long distances in the Highlands will know that road condition isn't an abstract issue.
A deteriorating surface means, more wear on vehicles; greater risk to cyclists and motorcyclists; more damage from severe weather; poorer driving conditions; increased maintenance costs later and potentially longer-term structural problems.
There is also a particular problem in the far North.
We have relatively low traffic volumes compared with the central belt, but we have very long distances.
That creates an awkward political problem.
If investment decisions are driven primarily by traffic numbers, the North will almost inevitably struggle to compete with heavily populated parts of Scotland.
But if road investment is viewed as economic infrastructure, the calculation looks rather different. A road serving a relatively small population can still be vital to the economy.
We should not make this an anti-A9 argument
I would tend not to ask "Why is the Government wasting billions on the A9?" but "If Scotland can find billions to improve one part of its strategic road network, why can't it develop an equally serious long-term investment and maintenance strategy for the roads serving the far North?"
That's a much harder question to answer.
The Scottish Government says the A9 is being upgraded because of the benefits it will deliver for safety, reliability, resilience and economic growth.
Those arguments apply north of Inverness too.
There is a broader issue as infrastructure investment can become self-reinforcing. Once a government commits billions to one corridor, that corridor acquires political momentum. Projects generate jobs, contracts, consultants, engineering work and political announcements.
Meanwhile, maintenance of an existing road produces far less glamorous headlines.
politicians don't cut a ribbon to announce "Another 12 kilometres of Highland road has been resurfaced." But to the person driving that road every week, it may be considerably more important than a press release about a project 100 miles away.
New roads are visible. Maintenance is almost invisible until it isn't done. Caithness needs to ask some uncomfortable questions and this is where Highland Council, local MSPs, MPs, business organisations and community groups could make a useful contribution.
Rather than simply demanding "more money for roads", they should ask Transport Scotland for the numbers.
We should be able to find out just how much has actually been spent on maintaining the trunk-road network north of Inverness over the last decade?
Then compare that with how much has been spent on the A9 Perth–Inverness programme over the same period?
And we should ask for the condition of the roads.
Not political opinions and not photographs of one bad pothole although this may make auseful way to draw attention to the issues facing pople in local areaa.
Actual engineering data proves the point.
If the figures show that the North is receiving a reasonable share of maintenance investment, fine but if they reveal a growing maintenance backlog, that is a different story.
The North shouldn't have to wait until roads fail.
Let's face it with budgts under strain there is a temptation with infrastructure to wait until something becomes a crisis.
Then the Government announces an emergency programme, finds the money and explains why the investment is essential. That is an expensive way of managing infrastructure.
Regular resurfacing and preventative maintenance can extend the life of roads and avoid more expensive reconstruction. For Caithness and northern counties that matters because there aren't many alternatives.
If a major road is closed or severely restricted, there isn't another motorway sitting ten miles away waiting to take the traffic.
The geography makes Caithness and the North different and transport policy should recognise that.
The A9 dualling programme is now firmly embedded in Scottish Government policy and the Government says it remains committed to completing the Perth–Inverness route by 2035.
So perhaps the time has come for Caithness and the wider North to ask a different question.
Not: "Why aren't we getting our own £4 billion road project?"
But: "What is Scotland's long-term road strategy for everything north of Inverness?"
Because Caithness doesn't need promises of another motorway. It needs roads that are safe, reliable, properly surfaced and capable of supporting the economy for the next 20 or 30 years.
And if billions can be found for new road infrastructure elsewhere, surely there should be a transparent conversation about maintaining the infrastructure we already depend upon.
The A9 may be Scotland's backbone. But the backbone doesn't end at Inverness.
And perhaps it is time somebody started asking what condition the rest of the spine is actually in.
And has anyone seen estimates for maintaining the super upgraded A9 between Perth and Inverness as th road surface will double - its dual but that means double the road.
I am sure you readers can think of more qustions.
Note
Bill Fernie was a Highland councillor for 14 years up to 2017 and as budget leader for part of that time knows full well the pressures on budgets and the complexities of decision making especially concerning roads.