Closed petition PE2206: Review the weighting for single-track roads in the road maintenance funding formula
Calling on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to:
• review the single-lane road weighting in the road maintenance funding formula, and either consider increasing it, or adapt the formula to reflect static or similar overheads for any road width
• conduct an assessment of single-lane road overhead costs for rural local authorities, and their impact on funding formulas across all road-related allocations.
Background information
Single-track roads are counted as half as costly as two-lane roads despite similar/identical overhead costs like ditches/drains/bridges/signage. This means local councils with more single-track road miles lose a disproportionate amount of road maintenance funding.
As shown on page 40 of the Scottish Local Government Finance ‘Green Book’ 2025-26, the road maintenance funding formula takes the total road miles in a council area and multiplies them by the number of lanes. Based on this formula, a standard road with one lane in each direction would receive double the weighting of a single-track road.
Given this, and because road maintenance funding is provided as a single pot to use over all road types in a local authority area, the issue also impacts people in towns and villages, as well as people on single-track roads in those local authorities.
This petition was considered by the Scottish Parliament
6 signatures