Heartlands will totally change how residents & commuters get to and from Whitburn (as well as get around it). There will be new roads, park & ride facilities, a transport interchange and a brand new motorway junction.

Heartlands junction 4A

Currently Whitburn is served by two junctions on the M8 motorway between Glasgow and Edinburgh. Junction 5 is approx. 6.5 km to the West and Junction 4 is approx. 3 km to the East. The new Heartlands Interchange (4A) will become the primary access point for Whitburn from the M8 motorway with the interchange feeding directly into the Heartlands Business Park and then into the main Heartlands Development and the existing town.

The Heartlands interchange will be a diamond formation with a “dumbbell” overbridge and roundabout layout as can be seen from the artist impression. Each roundabout will be linked by a dual carriageway over the motorway including a pedestrian / cycle way on the West side. The north roundabout apart from linking to the eastbound slip roads will have an extra arm which will provide access to Balgornie Farm. The south roundabout will, apart from the links to the westbound slip roads will link to the main dual carriageway which will be the main artery through the business park and onto the B7066. A further arm on the south roundabout will provide access to the proposed public transport interchange and park & ride facility

It is envisaged that the scale of the Heartlands will encourage bus operators to extend or divert existing bus routes and provide additional services, thus establishing improved links with surrounding communities. The Transport Interchange will facilitate linkages between local bus services and the strategic Glasgow - Edinburgh services and just over a mile away to the North of Whitburn, to Armadale train station on the Glasgow to Edinburgh Sprinter service due to open in 2010. .

Around Whitburn

There will be a number of changes to the existing roadways to the west and south west of the town. Along the existing B7066 (coming from Harthill) the new 4 way roundabout has been built with the east and west spurs being the continuations of the B7066. The North spur leads into Heartlands Business Park and to the new motorway junction. The south spur leads up to the junction with West Main Street, Polkemmet Road. As the initial phase of the housing develops there will a new roundabout at the entrance to Polkemmet Country Park. The north spur of the roundabout will lead into the country park, while the south spur will lead into the main housing areas of the Heartlands development forming the south western distributor road which will link to the A706 at the junction with Blaeberryhill Road. Roundabouts, along with other traffic calming measures will intentionally slow the traffic down leading to safer negotiation of the junctions leading in and out of these areas of the town.

Further afield

Central Scotland is seeing massive changes in the transport network. Edinburgh Airport underwent a £100 million redevelopment to extend and upgrade the terminals facilities making it a truly world class airport and Heartlands, Whitburn is just under 16 miles away, less than half and hour via the motorway and given favourable traffic not really that much more from Glasgow Airport in the west. The M8 allows direct connection to the motorway network throughout Scotland leading to all points North, South, East & West. Whitburn with its new motorway junction, business park, housing & leisure facilities will be ideally placed to benefit from the increased passenger numbers created by the Edinburgh Airport expansion. The airport now caters for 8.7 million passengers a year, flying to 90 different destinations with 40 airlines and it has been estimated passenger numbers will double to around 26 - 30 million a year by 2030. Half will be inbound foreign residents visiting Scotland giving a massive boost to the tourist industry and just how many of these will be golfers coming to play on the Donald Ross Memorial Courses.

The M9 spur, a replacement for the A8000 leading towards the Forth Road Bridge fully opened to traffic at the start of October 2007. The new road follows a dogleg route over 4.5km, linking the bridge with the M9 and M8. Most of the road will be motorway with the rest will be dual carriageway. Whitburn, again, with it's new motorway junction will benefit from the easier access to East Fife and the North because of the M9 spur extension.

Plans to upgrade the A801 River Avon Gorge crossing should take a step forward when in July 2008 the Scottish Parliament confirmed support for this road scheme which will improve access to the M9 motorway, Stirling and so on. More information can be found at the Falkirk Council website.

Edinburgh is only 25 minutes away by train on the frequent Bathgate - Edinburgh Sprinter route. The Bathgate station, just over 3 miles away from Whitburn has park and ride facilities. Commuters will soon have the opportunity to travel to either Glasgow or Edinburgh as work to re-instate the line between Bathgate & Airdrie has already started with services currently scheduled to start in the winter of 2010. Communters will be able to travel to either Glasgow or Edinburgh not only from Bathgate but from nearby Armadale where an new un-manned station will be built., good news for Whitburn. For more details go to the projects own website at http://www.airdriebathgateraillink.co.uk/

Currently to get to Glasgow by rail you have to journey south to Fauldhouse, which is on the Edinburgh - Glasgow Central line. Again it is a similar distance to Fauldhouse but the service is not as frequent. Timetables for each journey can be downloaded from the First Scotrail website.