The £500m M8 M73 M74 Motorway Improvements Project has reached a major milestone, as the first works on the main routes get underway next month.

The project represents a substantial investment in Scotland’s trunk roads and 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 to expect some disruption as traffic restrictions will come into force across the project roads from today (20 March 2015).

Traffic management will be introduced on the main trunk roads, including the introduction of a general speed limit of 50mph; reduced locally where required.

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.

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"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 installation of safety cameras is a tried and tested mechanism that improves safety for both road users and the workforce during what will be an extremely busy period in terms of construction. Based on our experience of the recently completed M80, we know that they can also encourage a steady traffic flow on all routes."

When complete, the M8 M73 M74 Motorway Improvements Project are intended to reduce congestion across the central Scotland motorway network, as well as improve the travel time reliability between the main route of Glasgow and Edinburgh.

(IT/MH)