Forth Replacement Crossing

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October and November Forth Replacement Crossing news round-up

December 11, 2011 in Forth Replacement Crossing | 1 comment

It’s been a while since we last had a round-up of the major news stories affecting the Forth Replacement Crossing’s progress. Below are the major items I’ve come across.

M9 Spur works and average speed cameras on M9 Spur and M90 approach
In addition to the previous post detailing the average speed cameras in Fife along the M90 and feeder roads, there are currently also average speed cameras on the M9 spur and the M9. These are in place during the early phases of construction of the M9 junction 1A upgrade. Just as in Fife, they involve hard shoulder closure and lane restrictions to allow the construction of overhead gantries. This work is being undertaken by Irish firm John Sisk also known as Sisk Roadbridge.

According to a report in Fife Today, 95% of motorists are obeying the M90 average speed of 40mph. I find this fairly surprising travelling that way quite frequently and being overtaken a lot while sitting at 40mph for such a long stretch. Of course I disagree the assertion in the article that this low speed increases the safety for workers, mainly as we’ve not seen any work taking place yet!

Post-construction management of bridges to be privatised
Various reports suggest the completed bridge will be managed by a private company. This follows the wind down of the current operator FETA, whose board was sacked by the SNP Transport minister Keith Brown and will not be bidding for the new contract. A rather curious move, when FETA was widely considered to being doing a good job on the current crossing. Current jobs are promised to be secure to be taken up by the new managing company.

Project information
There is now a dedicated phone number for enqueries relating to the Forth Road Bridge. Thanks to Queensferry Districts Community Council for bringing this to my attention. The number is: 0800 078 6910

There have been a series of meet the contractor events. I was unable to attend, but the slides have been posted here if you are interested.

Contracts and tenders
A number of tenders have been put out for work relating to the new Forth bridge. I don’t keep a close eye on these sites so I’m sure I’m missing quite a few. However below are a selection:
Roadsweeper hire
Security Services
Concrete cutting

Port edgar long sea outfall (sewarage works)
I’ve found a case study posted detailing the work that was undertaken at Port Edgar last year on moving the sewerage pipe. It’s quite an interesting read with a few nice photos.

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Forth Replacement Crossing construction begins: Average speed cameras for Fife approach to Forth Road bridge

October 2, 2011 in Forth Replacement Crossing | 2 comments

** 13/10/2011 Update ** Thanks to Ian Smith for alerting me to the fact that the scheme also covers the A92 up to the Crossgates junction. I haven’t been this way myself, so the updated map is my best estimate.

Those of you who have recently travelled to or from the bridge in Fife will have noticed speed restrictions in place and the closure of the hard shoulder. The road works are scheduled to last until the summer of 2012 and are for the installation of an Intelligent Traffic System (ITS), or average speed cameras to most of us. They are in place from the Forth road bridge to Halbeath near Dunfermline along the M90 and also on the A823 on the approach to the M90 from Pitreavie. Transport Scotland say that the initial phase of hard shoulder closures are for the construction of gantries upon which to site the cameras, which use automatic number plate recognition to catch speeding drivers.

new 40mph limit for average speed cameras on approach to forth road bridge

new 40mph limit for average speed cameras on approach to forth road bridge

The image above shows the extent of the current road works with the old 40mph limit at the approach to the bridge marked in purple. You can see the zone now extends to the Pitreavie roundabout (blue marker), Halbeath (green) and Crossgates on the A92 (yellow).

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June update: M9 upgrade contract awarded

July 17, 2011 in Contractors, Forth Replacement Crossing, General | No comments

Junction 1A of the M9 at Kirkliston is due to have a significant upgrade as part of the Forth Replacement Crossing work schedule. The contract for this was awarded to a joint venture between Irish firms John Sisk and Roadbridge at £25.6million, and was announced by Transport Scotland to be significantly under budget with the creation of some 125 jobs. Perhaps they will need a tea lady over there too?

Finally, I came across some Youtube footage of the barge doing site investigation work at Beamer Rock. According to the people who posted the video, the barge is called Jakup and is owned by Fastnet shipping. — update, URL updated 11/12/2011

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Forth Replacement Crossing May news roundup

July 13, 2011 in Forth Replacement Crossing | 1 comment

Following the successful tender award for the construction project to the Forth Crossing Bridge Constructors consortium, the month of May saw a number of further announcements of companies awarded significant contracts to work on the Forth Replacement Crossing project. This includes the design team being announced which is a consortium of companies including Danish consultant firm Rambollwho will head up the design team. They are supported by their UK subsidiary Gifford, a Dutch company called Grontmij and Leonhardt Andra & Partners (LAP).

A near £13million pound contract was awarded to Northern Irish firm John Graham, to install a variable speed limit system also known as an Integrated Transport System (ITS). The system will operate to control speed during heavy traffic and is supposed to reduce congestion, enforced via cameras.

May also saw the start of the first senior vacancies being advertised on various recruitment sites. While unfortunately the links have expired, these included Head of Safety at the Forth Replacement Crossing and several senior engineering jobs advertised by Morrisons.

Away from jobs and contract awards, We witnessed the first local outrage as trees were felled as part of preliminary construction tasks, without any kind of dialogue with local residents.

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Political positions on the replacement Forth crossing

April 24, 2010 in Politics | No comments

With the general election campaign in full swing, we explore each political parties stance on the Forth replacement crossing.

SNP
The Scottish National Party pledge that the Forth replacement crossing project is firmly protected from cuts to public expenditure. From their own press release on their party manifesto, they claim they will: “protect policies like free personal care, concessionary travel, the SNP Government’s £1.25 billion investment in new schools and the Forth Replacement Crossing”.

Labour
The labour position is not much different from the SNP’s with the party stating in it’s notes on the manifesto that it will build a replacement Forth crossing. Strangely it makes no mention of the new bridge in it’s actual manifesto.

Liberal Democrats
The Scottish Liberal Democrats make no mention of the new forth crossing in their manifesto

Conservatives
The Scottish Conservatives are also in favour of a new Forth Crossing, with their manifesto stating that “We support the construction of a new Forth crossing which needs to be recognised as the most pressing transport priority in Scotland.”

Green Party
The Scottish Green Party is the only party politically opposed to the bridge. On their website they state that they want to “fix the bridge, save billions”. They urge that following the review into cable detoriation on the old bridge, they could be repaired and replaced for just a fraction of the cost.

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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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City of Edinburgh and Fife Council give evidence to Forth Replacement Crossing committee

February 15, 2010 in Forth Replacement Crossing | No comments

As published on the Scottish Parliament website both Fife and the City of Edinburgh Council presented their views to the Forth Replacement Crossing committee on the 9th of February. While both Councils stressed that they were in favour of the plans, both (unsurprisingly) pushed their own agendas forward with regard to the allocation of any possible further budget. Edinburgh City Council in particular was scathing as to the lack of dialogue and communication that Transport Scotland had engaged in with regard planning and consultation. Fife Council in particular emphasised it’s desire to get a commitment from the Scottish Government regarding the development of Halbeath and Rosyth as Public Transport “Park & Choose” areas – costing £6m and £7.1m respectively and to prioritise any safeguards of Deep Sea World as a commercial operation when the construction starts.

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