Traffic flow data for the A985 and A977 trunk roads: EIR release

Information requested

Traffic flow data for the A985 trunk road between Longannet Roundabout and Cairneyhill Roundabout and the A977 trunk road from Gartarry Roundabout to Kinross?

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.

Please see the following table for the traffic count data requested.

Requestor Location	Counter Location	2019	2024
A985 Longannet Rdbt to Cairneyhill Rdbt	A985 Torryburn Bypass (Standing Stane Road)	11473	11136
A977 Gartarry Rdbt to Kinross	1/3 mile West of M90 Junction	5945	data not available*

*No data is available for the A977 site beyond 2019 due to a long standing traffic counter equipment fault.

Notes:

All data extracted from National Traffic Data System on 26 March 2025.
All numbers are Annual Average Daily Traffic Figures - so the total daily traffic at each location, averaged over the annual periods shown.
All numbers represent the sum of both directions of travel at each of the locations.

Under the terms of the exception at regulation 10(4)(a) of the EIRs (information not held), Transport Scotland is not required to provide information which it does not have. We do not have some of the information you have requested because, due to a long standing traffic counter fault, we do not hold traffic count data for the A977 post 2019.

This exception 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 exception. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exception. While we recognise that there may be some public interest in information about traffic count data, clearly we cannot provide information which we do not hold.

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at https://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.