The construction of one of Scotland’s largest infrastructure projects has reached milestone this week, as work on the main routes of the £500m M8 M73 M74 Motorway Improvements Project gets underway.

The project aims to tackle congestion problems on the A8/M8, M73, M74 and at key junctions including Raith (M74) and Shawhead (A725/A8).

Commuters are being warned of potential delays as traffic restrictions come into force from 20 March.

Rail works to Edinburgh Glasgow Rail Improvement Programme (EGIP) will also get underway during the summer months. This will include the closure of Winchburgh Tunnel from 13 June until 27 July to allow major engineering works to be carried out.

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Graeme Reid, Project Sponsor for Transport Scotland, said: "This major infrastructure investment will bring significant benefits to Scotland and deliver not only substantial economic savings to businesses and individuals through improved transport links, particularly between the commercial centres of Glasgow and Edinburgh. It will also improve journey time reliability, delivering congestion cutting measures and make our roads even safer, benefitting communities, businesses and the environment.

"One year in, we have reached a pivotal point in this three year project, involving traffic management measures which are likely to cause some disruption to road users, especially at peak times. The biggest challenge on a project of this scale is to keep the 100,000 vehicles that use these key routes every day moving and to ensure disruption to road users is minimised as far as is practically possible."

The M8 M73 M74 Motorway Improvements Project is being undertaken with the aim of reducing congestion across the central Scotland motorway network. Work began in February 2014 and is scheduled for completion by Spring 2017.

(IT/MH)