Motorist would have been quicker crawling
An interesting perspective on Cupar's much-debated traffic difficulties came this week from Callander man Bob Johnson — who has claimed that as he passed through the town a few days ago he could have beaten the queue by travelling on his "hands and knees."
- By Gordon Berry
- Published in the Courier : 07.08.10
- Published online : 08.08.10 @ 06.45pm
He echoed the frustration of motorists, including the chairman of Fife Council's north-east Fife area committee Andrew Arbuckle, who again found themselves in long queues.
Mr Johnson said that, having travelled "uneventfully" from Callander en route to St Andrews, he met a traffic jam at the junction with the main road from Perth at Balgarvie Road.
He said, "From previous experience I knew how slow Cupar traffic could be, but was unprepared for the crawl from the junction to the Angel monument.
"This took 25 minutes! If I was on my hands and knees I'm convinced that I could have easily beaten the traffic to the monument.
"If this is the best that Fife Council roads department can do for what used to be the county town of Fife then I feel genuinely sorry, not only for the travelling public forced to pass through Cupar, but more importantly for the exasperated residents and particularly for the business community.
"Businesses must be seeing their profits fall away as travellers decide that getting out of Cupar is of greater importance than stopping to spend time and money in the town."
Mr Arbuckle said he shared Mr Johnson's feelings, and had twice been caught up in similar situations over the past few days, one of them on Friday.
"One of my primary aims is to improve traffic flow through Cupar, and the council has a £1.6 million project that will achieve the objective," he said.
Council transport engineer Gordon Hughes said problems are sometimes caused when motorists become frustrated and jump red lights, causing knock-on problems.
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