old forth road bridge

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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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Forth Road Bridge public meetings for residents

March 13, 2010 in Forth Road Bridge, South Queensferry | No comments

FETA, the Forth Road Bridge authority recently distributed flyers to local residents advising them of two upcoming public meetings designed to discuss the work required to replace the bearings on the bridge’s approach viaducts; a contract that was recently awarded to Balfour Beatty. that was announced at the end of February.

On Monday the 15th of March, the first meeting will be held at the Forth Road Bridge Administration office in South Queensferry and the following evening on the 16th of March it will be held in the Queensferry Hotel in North Queensferry. Both meetings are open to all and scheduled to start at 7p.m. with refreshments provided.

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News round-up: Dedicated bus route to be slower and Replacement bridge banks

March 4, 2010 in Forth Replacement Crossing, South Queensferry | No comments

The Queensferry and District Community Council are reported to have stated that the proposed use of the existing Forth Road Bridge as a dedicated public transport corridor would actually make journey times between Edinburgh and Fife slower. This is because the new routes would have a number of traffic light controlled junctions (up to 6) that would delay buses from re-joining the main route back into Edinburgh or Fife. The powers that be, however suggest that with correct prioritising of signals for public transport, then this isn’t really an issue. It does seem slightly odd though, that what currently is a road straight through onto the bridge at either end cannot continued to be used by buses with slipways directly onto the M90 in the North and the A90 in the South.

In addition to the story above, The Scotsman has also recently run a story that a National infrastructure bank is needed to raise and control finances on the Forth Replacement Crossing project.

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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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Government mulls new Forth bridge public transport corridor

February 1, 2010 in News | No comments

Various press sources have over the past few days posed the question as to what should happen to the old bridge. While the idea of making the old bridge available for all non-motorised users and buses has been around for a while – the reported costs of putting the bridge to such a use had not been revealed. The Scotsman led the way claiming the old road bridge would become the worlds most expensive bus lane after a £112 million refit as well as the annual maintenance of £5million. Herald Scotland adds that parties have been invited to comment on such proposals for this ‘car free’ bridge. The deadline for submissions is the 26th of February.

Of course, this comes after the initial deadline for objections to the new bridge has now passed with some 90 objections lodged and a question about noise raised by the local politician Margaret Smith.

All this begs the question of funding for both the old and new bridge. The Herald has an interesting discussion about the cuts in spending required post-recession for Scotland to ever be able to balance the books. Under one of the proposals this article suggests the Scottish government is thinking of selling the national water resources to fund the bridge. The political rumbling continues with reports thatopposition parties at Holyrood are uniting against the SNP government to expose the budget secrets.

Some sad news in that a maintenance operative contractor working on the rail bridge died after a fall.

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