A77 road
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The A77 is a major trunk road in Scotland. It links the city of Glasgow in the central belt, linking the towns of Newton Mearns, Kilmarnock, Prestwick, Ayr, Maybole, and Girvan on a south westerly route to the town of Stranraer in the south west, passing through the counties of Renfrewshire, Ayrshire, and Wigtownshire.
It then continues for a further 8 miles west as a non-trunk road, terminating in the holiday town of Portpatrick on the Rhinns of Galloway coast. At its northern end, it is a motorway-standard road (the M77) between Fenwick and Central Glasgow.
The A77 is important as it acts as both the main link to Prestwick Airport, and it also serves the three main ferry terminals for sailings to Northern Ireland - namely Stranraer, Cairnryan, and Troon, and as a result carries a lot of commuter, tourist and heavy goods vehicle traffic.
Despite numerous upgrades, (Ayr and Kilmarnock were bypassed in the 1970s, while the motorway sections were created in the 1990s), the Northern Ayrshire stretches of the road suffer from gross undercapacity. The most notorious section, an unsegregated 4-lane single carriageway between Kilmarnock and Newton Mearns was one of the most dangerous and accident-prone sections of road in Scotland, owing to the fact that cars could pass each other at over 80mph, despite numerous warnings to drivers that the road only has a speed capacity of 60mph.
This stretch was finally closed completely in April 2005, when the M77 extension to Fenwick was opened to traffic, meaning that a continuous dual carriageway road now exists from Glasgow to Ayr.