It's appropriate that I should write my 13th. rant on the 13th. day of the 13th. year.
The targets of my wrath this time are Developers and Council Planners. For those that don't know, industrial parks have been springing up to the west of Aberdeen city in the last couple of years - Westhill to start with, but now Kingswells too.
No problem with that - good investments in nice new facilities for all the booming oil service companies out there. The problem is there are now thousands of people working in these new offices, but the access roads are exactly the same narrow little country roads that have always been there. How exactly did the Developers get away with building these huge industrial parks without improving the infrastructure around them?
The new industrial parks are so recent that Google Earth still shows them as just green fields:
The pink xxx's in the circle above are what's built on already and the xx's across the road are where they are about to start building next, with the two areas divided by a narrow country road.
From a personal point of view, it's a bit of a disaster as it means the former Aberdeen city traffic build-up now starts several miles outside the city and on my main route to our factory at Bridge of Don. I have developed rat runs that manage to avoid some of it, but these minor roads can't be used when the weather's a bit dodgy.
The workers at these new units can't be best pleased either as they struggle to get in and out of their industrial compounds. I believe it's utter madness trying to get out any time after 4:30 pm.
And don't start me on the much delayed Western Peripheral Road (http://www.awpr.co.uk/) - it's at least 25 years overdue now and still nothing's been done. The population has virtually doubled since Oil came to the North East over 40 years ago, and we're still living with the same road structure.
And whilst I'm on a roll - they're about to close Mugiemoss Road for 6 months, which is going to make the Haudagain roundabout - which leads down to the only crossing of the Don in the area - an even bigger nightmare - and that's going to be my only access and exit route to Bridge of Don. I should retire now.
Mugiemoss Road in pink to the left, with Haudagain roundabout circled, and, in the top right hand corner, my place of work - Bridge of Don.
