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travelling slight

Transport, never far from the top of the hit list in Chamber action priorities shoved the current economic crisis temporarily off pole position at the start of last month and put itself firmly back into top spot.

We saw temperatures dropping to almost record levels, tempers rising as fast in the opposite direction and somewhere in between, the city and shire went into a complete meltdown.

A few days earlier we'd scoffed at our softy neighbours south of the border as they were brought to a standstill by what we loftily described as a few centimetres of snow. We paid the price when the city in a few short hours was brought to a complete and utter gridlock by falling snow.

The situation was exacerbated by the fact that half the city workforce had been sent home early and the other half were trying to make it back to their offices after lunchtime meetings.

But while the snow undoubtedly made the situation much worse than usual, all it really did was throw a blanket over the underlying day on day nightmare of the daily commute. For some it was the straw which broke the camel's back and it resulted in calls from some of our members, expressing once again their anger and frustration over a traffic and transport situation which seems to have been on the road to nowhere for years.

As is often the case the Dyce area seemed to fare worst and businessmen spoke of their fury and embarrassment that business clients spent two hours trying to get from the airport to their offices only a short distance away.

One of our most promising young companies which has seen major expansion and growth in recent years said that if they could do it all again, they'd base their business anywhere but Aberdeen. They increasingly find that their particular skills shortage is the reluctance of potential employees to work in the Dyce area because they don't want to spend hours travelling to and from their work each day.

As a Chamber we consistently and vigorously campaign for improvements to end the city's gridlock. We have offered to host road user steering groups to advise and suggest how simple traffic management measures could help address choke points and improve utilisation of the current road capacity. We input to consultations with specific ideas on how to address ssues of intermodal connections and we continue to support wider campaigns such as the AWPR and the dualling of the A90 north of the city.

But we remain very concerned that the essential local road projects which will both connect the WPR and lock in the benefits it will bring for trunk road traffic are absent. These projects must be conceived, designed and started now if we are to maximise the reduction in gridlock when the WPR opens.

Traffic frustration caused by a totally inadequate road network simply does not match our economic ambitions. We must stop hiding our head in the sand and support our business community by providing them with a competitive and efficiency transport network around the Scottish Government's investment in the WPR and other major trunk road projects. If we commit to this then we can have a grown up debate with business about managing further growth in car use and improving the public transport network to act as a viable and cost competitive alternative.

Transport is one of our key issues at the national level too and to kick off 2009 we are working with colleagues at the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) and Chambers throughout the entire BCC network on two different national initiatives.

One of these is the congestion which is choking businesses throughout the country. BCC has commissioned a study into the inter-urban network which specifically looks at long term solutions to the increasing problem of congestion. It looked at several options ranging from additional capacity through to road pricing, travel plans and other alternatives such as tele-conferencing.

Our second issue stems from the Chamber's High Speed Rail (HSR) Group and as the name suggests will specifically drive forward a national strategic project on High Speed Rail: The Wider Economic Benefits.

Across the country we live with a transport network which is creaking at the seams. Increasing congestion on both the roads and the railways is estimated to cost British business £23.2billion per annum. Government policy on the railways currently does not offer a significant vision beyond 2014 yet major infrastructure projects can take decades to complete so we need to be starting work now.

The Chamber network believes that a new High Speed Rail service extending into Scotland is a vital part of that new infrastructure. HSR as opposed to just a faster rail service requires a newly-constructed dedicated railway network which would carry passengers between key population/business hubs without stops in between. That in turn would free up capacity on the existing rail network to allow greatly improved freight capacity, passenger service timetabling and speed on existing routes.

Next month's Business Bulletin will have a particular focus on transport. In addition to looking at our national policies in more detail we'll look at local transport issues and what we can do to keep us on the move