Dales Lees road closure start date confirmed
SSEN has now confirmed that the Dales Lees road closure will begin from 8 July, lasting for at least ten weeks.
During this time traffic will be diverted through Brae.
The A968 road is being closed to allow SSEN to lay cabling as part of its North Mainland reinforcement project.
In an update released this week, SSEN said: “We appreciate that some local travel will take slightly longer when the diversion is in place, and we’d like to thank everyone for their patience and understanding as teams carry out this essential work.”
The company said it will start preparing for the work from 30 June.
The A968 road is well used for traffic going from Voe through to Firth/Mossbank and in particular the Toft ferry terminal, which links to Yell and subsequently to Unst.
SSEN previously said the road at Dales Lees was too narrow to allow for cable laying work to be carried out while traffic was still flowing.
The company will be laying two high voltage underground cables to connect Sullom Voe Terminal to the local/national grid.
The project will also secure the power supply to households in the North Mainland and the North Isles once Sullom Voe Terminal’s own power station has been switched off.
But the road closure appears to have caused some concern in Brae community, where traffic would be diverted through.
Shetland North councillor Andrew Hall said some constituents were concerned in particular about speeding and road safety.
He told a recent meeting of Shetland’s community safety and resilience board that some people will have an “extra 10 minutes to travel, so if they’re trying to catch a ferry, they’ll invariably speed through Brae”.
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