A96 Road

The A96 is a major road in the North of Scotland.

It runs generally west/north-west from Aberdeen, bypassing Kintore, Fochabers, Inverurie, Huntly and Forres, and running through Keith, Elgin and Nairn. The road terminates at the A9 outside of Inverness.

The road begins with a junction with the A956 near King Street in Aberdeen City Centre, as a dual carriageway and goes on to form part of the huge 'Mounthooly Roundabout'. It then exits Aberdeen to the North West, meeting the A90 at the Haudagain Roundabout, a notoriously busy junction. It then passes Bucksburn, and has a junction with Aberdeen Airport. The road is then dual carriageway until Inverurie, where it becomes single carriageway until just before it meets the A9 in Inverness.

The A96 has a poor safety record in the substantial single carriageway section, and the road has topped polls to find the most unpopular roads in Scotland on more than one occasion. Debate about a new section of road to bypass Fochabers took place for a number of years. When the new bridge was built over the River Spey (in about 1970), it was built to be in line with a possible northern route. The bypass will pass to the north of Fochabers and south of Mosstodloch, construction started on 2 February 2010 and was opened in January 2012.

The A96 was formerly part of the Euroroute system, of route E120 which ran in a circular route between Inverness, Aberdeen, Dundee and Perth.