new forth road bridge

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South Queensferry to have visitors centre following completion of the new Forth Road bridge

January 5, 2011 in Forth Replacement Crossing, new forth road bridge, South Queensferry | No comments

South Queensferry is to be the location of a new visitors centre, providing information to its thousands of annual visitors, reports the Scotsman. The building will serve as an information centre during the construction of the replacement Forth crossing, and will thereafter become a visitors centre for all three bridges. The news has been welcomed by Queensferry & District Community council. No news of the location of the centre has so far been reported.

There has also been a motion tabled by Labour MSP John Park to allow the public to vote on names for the bridge. His suggestions have so far included: Ark Royal Bridge, named after the recently retired Navy flagship, or other well known Fife figures Andrew Carnegie or Adam Smith. Have your own suggestions? Please post them here.

Archaeological excavations to begin at site of Forth replacement crossing

August 16, 2010 in Forth Replacement Crossing, Forth Road Bridge, new forth road bridge, Scottish Parliament, South Queensferry | No comments

BBC News recently ran a story announcing that archaeological were to begin this month (August, 2010) following the award of a contract to Edinburgh based company Headland Archaeology. According to the report, initial studies will focus on the area of St.Margaret’s Hope and the Echline Fields, sites identified by Transport Scotland and Historic Scotland as being of interest. Fife newspaper The Courier added that investigation will involve “geophysical survey, trial trenches and hand excavation”.

The Forthspan bid was recently rocked by news that the worlds largest bridge builder, Vinci Construction has pulled out of the bid. It was promptly replaced by MT Hojgaard who were involved in the building of the Oresund bridge between Sweden and Denmark. As reported by The Scotsman, there continue to be concerns about the ability of both Forthspan and it’s rival the Forth Crossing Constructors Group to last right through the tendering process and to provide a competitive bid.

The Forthspan collaboration includes major constructors Balfour Beatty, Morgan EST and BAM Nuttall and now joined by MT Hojgaard who have replaced Vinci, previously the leading organisation. Opposing them is the Forth Crossing Constructors Group, a consortium consisting of Morrison Construction, Hochtief, American Bridge and ACS.

I don’t come across many of these, but I did find an objection raised by Cala Homes against the proposed work on the M9 junction to facilitate the forth replacement crossing access around Winchburgh. Interestingly, it looks like Transport Scotland proposes to lease the land from Cala during the course of the work, rather than using it’s compulsory purchase powers. Have any other formal objections in writing? Let me know.

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Forth replacement crossing news roundup for July

July 25, 2010 in Forth Replacement Crossing, Forth Road Bridge, new forth road bridge, Scottish Parliament, South Queensferry | No comments

Cancelling the replacement forth crossing would cost over £22million according to the Scottish executive., Responding to a question raised in the Scottish Parliament on the 14th of July, Transport Minister Stewart Stevenson gave this total explaining that wind down and staff redeployment costs would be in addition to this figure and could not at present be estimated.

Work has also begun to move a sewerage pipe near Port Edgar, some 200metres to the sast as part of preparation for construction to commence on the new Forth bridge. Scottish Water has been instructed by Transport Scotland to start this work, who are outsourcing it to a local firm AMC Subsea based in Leith, Edinburgh. By moving the pipe now, it will not delay construction on the bridge when this is due to start, estimated next year.

An economic feasibility study has been completed on the replacement forth bridge, by S.C. Wamuziri of Napier University and A.G.F. Clearie of engineering firm Jacobs (the current project managers). It is available to purchase from it’s publishers ‘Emerald’. If anyone has a copy, I would be interested in reading it.

I’ve recently become aware of the blog called A place to stand written by a political nay-sayer, blogging on amongst other things the replacement Forth Road bridge. While his posts (as blogs inevitably are) are all personal opinion, they do make an interesting read as a counter to the usual political dogma we have thrown at us. Along similiar lines, the Caledonian Mercury online paper, recently posted an opinion piece by Lawrence Marshall, chairman of the Forthright Alliance re-affirming his opinion on why we do not need a replacement crossing, but should repair the existing bridge instead.

And finally, chances are you shouldn’t use facebook at work. You probably do, but really you shouldn’t. Well, our civil servants have found a good way around all this. With the current social media crazy, why not join facebook under a work account, and then it must be OK. I present to you, the Forth Road Bridge facebook account run by our government funded friends at FETA.

Forth replacement crossing news round up 23/2/2010

February 23, 2010 in Forth Replacement Crossing, new forth road bridge, News | 1 comment

It’s all gone a bit quiet the last few weeks on the bridge front. But here is the pick of what’s arrived over the last week or so.

Extra-wide hard shoulders are due to add millions on to the cost for the new bridge. Not quite sure why this hasn’t been revealed before, although it sounds like it’s in the costings already – it just happens to be much more expensive hard shoulders than other bridges of it’s kind. This was countered by an equally vague news story claiming that the British chamber of commerce has estimated that the £1.6billion (although estimates are now much higher) spend on the new bridge would rake in around £6billion of benefits to the economy.

The current old bridge has come under the spotlight again, with the announcement that £7m is to be spend testing and assessing the condition of it’s anchorages reports The Scotsman. This comes very recently after we heard from the BBC that a further £13.6m will be spend replacing bearings on both approaches to the bridge. These bearings are crucial in allowing the bridge to ‘move’ during seasonal variations in temperature. It does seem slightly curious however that such work is seen as a priority, as the previous bearings have lasted several decades – whereas these potentially only have a few years of heavy use (they are not scheduled to complete till 2013, by which time construction on the new bridge should be well underway).

I also found a very interesting objection lodged by a local static gear fisherman against the proposed bridge. The objection references three commercial fishing operations that operate in the Forth Estuary around the site of the bridge. According to the objection, he catches lobster, crabs and whelks and his primary fishing area of Beamer Rock will be directly underneath the new bridge, meaning that his commercial operation will be directly affected.

For a government agency, Transport Scotland seems remarkably in touch with ‘new media’. You’ll imagine my surprise when I discovered that it has a twitter feed, that it’s been happily posting comments on since last October. Nothing too interesting generally, just a set of headlines followed by a TWURL URL to a more formal news page on it’s website. Actually, maybe it’s just my ignorance – I just found an STV feed too.

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New Forth Bridge location

February 18, 2010 in new forth road bridge | No comments

The replacement Forth crossing is proposed to be located upstream of the existing Forth Road Bridge and will run at around a ten degree offset to the current bridge in the South Westerly direction. That means, while roughly parallel to the existing bridge, it’s Southern side will be substantially further West of the current bridge than the Northern side is.

At it’s Northern landfall on the South shores of Fife, it will be very close to the existing bridge, just West of The Queensferry Hotel. In the South, it will land much further west of the current bridge on the edge of South Queensferry, coming in just to the west of Port Edgar marina and the Clufflats residential area, right on top of Inchgarvie House. A large junction is proposed around the site of the current Echline corner turn-off from the A904 Builyeon road.

A map showing the proposed position of the bridge is shown below. This was reproduced from the original maps available from the Transport Scotland Information Centre

Proposed route for new Forth Road Bridge

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Transport Scotland pledges new Forth Bridge to be on time and on budget

February 7, 2010 in new forth road bridge | No comments

Transport Scotland has re-iterated that the new Forth bridge will be on schedule and be within the £2.3bn budget set. This despite the current economic downturn and the fact that the Forth Crossing Bill has not made it through parliament yet.

Meanwhile the two consortiums who are proposing to bid for the project have requested further groundwork (and marine) investigations to be carried out. Details are currently being collected from both Forthspan and Forth Crossing Constructors (the two interested consortia) on what these works should entail, and are expected to last around 8 weeks

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