roadworks · the local record
West Lothian roadworks
Every road opening logged in West Lothian since 2006, taken from the official Scottish Road Works Register. This is the whole county in one place: who digs the roads, where, how often, how long it takes, and how much of it was never planned.
Every figure comes from the public register. Street names are worked out from each site’s map location and checked against known roads.
What the register holds
Not all of it is a hole in the road
The register is a record of activity, not just digging. Alongside physical excavations it logs reactive repairs, advance enquiries, permissions and street events. Here is the real split across all 159,958 entries.
Who digs the roads
52 organisations, and a clear shift
The council does just over half the work. The rest is the utilities, and increasingly the telecoms companies laying fibre.
Top organisations
The fibre years
The balance has tipped fast. Over the last two years telecoms account for 54.4% of all works and the council just 22.5%, as the fibre rollout digs its way across the county.
The same roads, again and again
One street, a dozen different diggers
Of 7,568 streets on the register, 1,642 have been opened by five or more different organisations, and 3,334 by three or more. Each body plans on its own, so the same road is reopened again and again.
Main arteries · works 2006 to 2026
The most-dug streets
Twenty years of work, road by road
The roads that have seen the most recorded activity since 2006. The old town main streets dominate, the arteries that carry both the traffic and the pipes and cables underneath.
Unplanned work
About one in six was never scheduled
25,416 entries (15.9%) are reactive: urgent, emergency, or fixing something that had already failed. It is a rough measure of how much disruption nobody could plan around.
How long it takes
Quick on average, with a long tail
Most works are short. The median is 3 days and the average 13.2. But a long tail drags on: 3,063 ran for more than ninety days and 438 for more than a year, the longest close to four years.
Across the county
Where the work falls
Roughly where the works land, by town. Livingston and Bathgate carry the most, but every town in the county is well represented.
Approximate zones based on each works’ map reference, so a few near the boundaries fall in the wrong column. They show the shape, not an exact count.
Twenty years of volume
Activity climbed, then settled high
Recorded activity rose through the 2010s, peaked around 2016 and 2017, then settled at roughly six to eight thousand entries a year, with 2025 back near the top of that range.
2026 is a partial year. Source: SRWR Open Data.
Right now
Still digging
About 8,764 entries in the last twelve months, with 931 already booked in ahead.
Looking forward
Planning a smarter county
This is not only a record of the past. The real value is in what it points to. Across a whole county, the roadworks data is the clearest case for where better coordination and smarter use of technology could cut disruption and save public money.
Plan the county’s works as one system
Fifty-two organisations dig the same roads with no shared forward plan. Could data and AI build a single county-wide view that batches jobs, so a street is opened once a year rather than several times, and times works around schools, events and peak traffic? Dig once, and dig well.
Score every dig for cost and disruption
If every planned job carried a cost and disruption score, the works that matter most could be prioritised and the rest combined or coordinated. A cost and impact approach, rather than first come, first dug.
Predict and prevent the avoidable
25,416 works were reactive. Could better data on ageing pipes and cables flag failures before they happen, turning emergency digs into planned ones, and could clearer incentives design out the worst overruns?
Use the levers already in place
Scotland already has rules for coordinating works and penalties for overruns and poor reinstatement. The real question is whether they are being used to full effect across the county, and where better data would help them bite.
The bigger idea is to help a place like West Lothian use data and new technology for the practical things, planning, services and resources, while protecting the character of its towns that no dataset ever captures. A county that runs smarter without losing what makes it home.
Sources & method
Data provenance
- Scottish Road Works Register Open Data ↗· Open Government Licence v3.0
Caveats & data notes
- The register records activities, not only physical digs. It includes advance enquiries, permissions and street events, and notices that were later abandoned. The composition breakdown separates these.
- Street names are derived from each works’ map location and checked against known roads. A small number may name a neighbouring street.
- Geography is approximate, grouped by grid-reference zones, so works near town boundaries can fall in the wrong column.
- Works are de-duplicated by activity, with the most recent record kept. Durations use recorded start and end dates.
- Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
Every figure on this page traces to its official source. Share it as it stands.
Keep going
Related deep dives
A Scotland council area profile (S12000040): cited indicators set against Scotland, by theme. Not a scored composite.
Where coordination could cut cost and disruption: avoidable repeat digs, reactive hotspots, and works that overrun.
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