Fife Council cut short £650,000 of roadworks in Dunfermline

There has been a pause in the £650,000 project, the cones and temporary traffic lights have been removed for the past fortnight, but it's set to start again on Sunday.

Most of the work will now take place overnight and it should be finished in three weeks - initially they said it would be October or November.

The council's service manager for roads and lighting, Mark Dewar, said: "We understand how disruptive the earlier phases of these roadworks were and we're now taking a new approach to minimise further disruption.

"We thank road users for their continued patience and cooperation as we get Dunfermline ready for future developments.”

The roadworks have proved hugely controversial, with some drivers questioning the need for traffic lights on the roundabout. (Image: David Wardle)

The project, to instal traffic lights on the Bothwell Gardens roundabout, resurface roads and upgrade the traffic signals at the Elgin Street and Moodie Street crossroads, started a day earlier than scheduled on June 16.

Initially the council said it would last 20 weeks, this was later amended to 16 weeks, and the four-way traffic lights led to long queues and plenty of frustration for motorists and local businesses - one said they were losing £4,000 a week due to customers avoiding the roadworks.

There were rumours the council would cut up to six weeks off the timeframe and this morning a statement said: "We’ve revised our plans on how we'll carry out the remaining roadworks on Bothwell Gardens roundabout and Nethertown Broad Street.

"From Sunday (July 28) we’ll be upgrading the traffic signals and resurfacing the junction between Elgin Street, Moodie Street and Nethertown Broad Street.

"This final phase of the works should take around three weeks to complete.

"Apart from Sunday, all works will be undertaken during the night starting at 7pm.

"All temporary traffic management will be removed by 6am the following morning. This approach ensures there's no disruption to daytime traffic."

On one occasion, all of the traffic lights were stuck on red, leaving fuming drivers to sit in long queues of traffic that didn't move. (Image: David Wardle)

The local authority added: "These road improvements are necessary to allow new development around the city.

"The planned growth in Dunfermline, which includes 8,000 new homes, four new primary schools and development of employment land in the coming years, means we need to act now to ensure future traffic can continue to move freely around the city.

"These current road improvements are part of the transport measures identified as necessary to help mitigate the impacts of the planned development and follow on from the new traffic lights which were installed at the A823 Pitreavie roundabout in 2021, which were the first phase of these developer funded measures."

Other measures to cope with the anticipated rise in traffic, due to housing development, are two bypasses.

The Northern Link Road and Western Distributor Road will serve the new housing estates in the north, west and south-west of Dunfermline and take traffic away from the city centre.