Engineers’ confidence in bridge cables grows

Exhibitors’ views prompt fresh questions over bridge funding

by Bruce Whitehead

 ENGINEERS WORKING on plans for the Forth replacement crossing have indicated that they are increasingly confident that cable drying will arrest the corrosion  affecting the existing bridge. The finance secretary John Swinney has said he cannot be sure that dehumidification would work, and that this justified his decision to spend £2.34bn on a new crossing. However, Transport Scotland engineers have told public transport campaigners that they are “pretty confident” that the final conclusions on the dehumidification project will show that the present bridge can have a “substantially longer life” with only minor renewal work.

 

            The latest views from expert engineers came in a report circulated by the Scottish Association for Public Transport to campaigners opposed to the building of a second Forth road crossing. Tom Hart, the vice-chair of the SAPT, said the comments were made by a team of engineers led by John Howison of Transport Scotland, at a public exhibition on plans for the new crossing in Edinburgh last week. In October positive first results from the cable drying project confirmed the view of the bridge master Barry Colford, who said he was highly confident that the process would work.

Mr Hart said that much had been made of the need to keep the bridge open for heavy goods vehicles between the Lothians and Fife, but said this was not the whole story. “HGVs account for an unusually low proportion of vehicle journeys on the bridge compared to those in the main central-belt motorways and other major roads. Just 5.5% of Forth crossings were made by HGVs in 2007 while on the A80 at Cumbernauld for example, the figure was 21%,” said Mr Hart. The SAPT believes that about half of all HGVs crossing the Forth could travel via Kincardine, leaving only about 2.5% of all vehicle crossings at Queensferry being made by lorries. “To spend £2.3bn for a new bridge to carry such traffic would seem an incredible waste of funds given other competing priorities,” said Mr Hart. He suggested that hauliers’ groups might accept an HGV ban on the Forth bridge if it was combined with a vehicle tax cut and accelerated building of projects such as the north Dunfermline by-pass.

            Mr Hart said growth in car traffic on the two Forth road crossings has been slow or negative in the last five years, and was unlikely to return to high growth anywhere in the region. But he said engineers’ views on the lack of possibility of an imminent failure of the Forth road bridge meant that the scheme to build a new bridge should be abandoned.

            The SAPT is to write to MSPs warning them that the failure to agree a funding package for the Forth road bridge would mean a halt to many essential local transport schemes in order to pay for it. The organisation’s president, Dr John McCormick, said most MSPs were unlikely to change their minds about building a new Forth crossing, for fear of getting egg on their face. But he added: “MSPs might be ready to delay a decision on the project, given the impact it will have on transport projects in many of their own communities.”

*The Scottish Association for Public Transport has called for Transport Scotland to be given borrowing powers to fund future major transport projects. The Association said these would follow similar arrangements granted to the Forth Estuary Transport Authority (FETA) and Network Rail, and would be linked to additional income streams to cover repayments. The SAPT accepted there would be formidable political problems, but suggested a fuel surcharge in all except rural areas plus licences to use roads during peak periods could help to fund the essential transport infrastructure and avoid future Treasury rows.