The city is gripped by traffic chaos – gridlock at Gallagher Retail Park, mystery road requirements delaying Dundee FC’s stadium and the Berlin Wall was easier to get round than the Swallow Roundabout.
We need the bypass we were promised.
A dual carriageway from west of Longforgan to north of Tealing – like Aberdeen’s western peripheral.
There would be fewer problems at the Swallow, difficulties for the stadium would be greatly reduced, and the Kingsway’s Forfar Road junction would be much quieter.
‘Empty election-time bribe’
The bypass was promised in the SNP manifesto of 2008, but nothing was ever done and the idea was quietly dropped in 2022.
It was another empty election-time bribe. The only thing Dundee ever gets is taken for granted.
So what major travel plan is the city left with?
Sadly, only a daft idea to spend £230 million on active travel routes.
For years we’ve been fed the myth that everyone aches to commute by bike and only a pesky lack of infrastructure stops them.
If that were true, people would spontaneously abandon car travel and use existing roads to cycle upon, crowding cars out.
But that doesn’t happen because cycling isn’t what they want.
Technological innovation throughout human history has been an upward spiral, not a circle.
Change doesn’t ever bring the past back around.
‘Zero examples’
An age of self-powered travel for most journeys will not return because mankind never gives up a major technology once it has been invented.
There are zero examples of that. Name one if you can?
For the vast majority, cycling will remain a fair-weather option for short journeys, or a hobby.
Dundee will never be a mass cycle-commuting city. No town in Scotland will ever see a majority travelling by bike every day.
In the future, we’ll want cars, or something evolved from cars.
A post-carbon method of transport that’s clean, gives personal freedom – and keeps us insulated from young thugs on buses.
‘We need more roads’
Global car sales show which type of transport is most desirable. Huge profits will continue to be made by encouraging that desire.
If you believe nothing else I’m saying, believe that.
Those in Dundee who don’t have cars want cars. Will you tell them they aren’t allowed to own one?
Usage here will grow too.
So putting anything in the way of cars and the goods carried by HGVs is a mistake.
The conclusion is simple: we need more roads.
We need a rolling programme of new routes and continuous improvements to existing roads, starting now.
‘Virtue-signalling myth’
In 2024 the Scottish Government gave £97.9 million to Sustrans, who squandered it on rarely used cycle tracks.
That is ridiculous.
That money should be put towards real problems, not wasted on a virtue-signalling myth.
Look at the number of commuters arriving in Dundee on bikes. Not Osaka, not Utrecht – Dundee.
Then look at the number arriving in cars. There’s your argument-winning proof.
If you still want to get on your bike, great. There are plenty of cycle paths for you already.
But if your self-entitlement is so strong that you think billions should be spent to indulge a minority hobby, what sort of person are you?
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