Average traffic speeds for M8 J26 to J19: EIR release

FOI reference: FOI/18/00746
Date received: 10 March 2018
Date responded: 5 April 2018

Information requested

Do you have 2018 speeds for period November 2017 to Jan 2018 to compare? Can you also annotate these more recent winter months on the graphs? It is the traffic flows over this winter that seem to be particularly slow and traffic jams eastbound at night used to occur sometimes but they seem to be occurring all the time now.

Can you also provide historic average speed shown as well on the graph as this ties in with may view (and other FOI information requested) that the M74 junction design is causing chaos to traffic flows on M8.

Has there been an increase in traffic using the road?

Response

As the information you have requested is 'environmental information' for the purposes of the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (EIRs), we are required to deal with your request under those Regulations. We are applying the exemption at section 39(2) of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA), so that we do not also have to deal with your request under FOISA.

This exemption is subject to the 'public interest test'. Therefore, taking account of all the circumstances of this case, we have considered if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exemption. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exemption, because there is no public interest in dealing with the same request under two different regimes. This is essentially a technical point and has no material effect on the outcome of your request.

The graphic previously issued in our response to FOI/18/00370, titled "M8 J26 to J19 080218" contains the information for the period November 2017 to January 2018. This is the orange line on the graph. The other lines are for the same period but for the previous three years for comparison purposes. Please note the below, linking this response to the previous information provided:

/publications/foi-18-00370/

From this information we can see that there is no discernible difference in the average speeds seen on this journey over the last four years. 2014 shows the highest average speeds, with all other years since only showing a decrease in average speed of circa 5mph.

Traffic counts taken from several sample points along the route in question show no discernible difference over the last 4 years.

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