Years of cutbacks and delays put us on road to Forth fiasco
WORK to strengthen the Forth Road Bridge was delayed four times amid a series of crippling budget cuts, the Scottish Daily Mail can reveal today.
Experts first identified the need for major strengthening ‘soon’ more than nine years ago and the project was originally planned for 2008-09.
But a trial scheme only got under way in 2013-14, and has not yet finished, sparking demands for answers about SNP cuts from opposition politicians.
In his three-year spending review announced in 2011, Finance Secretary John Swinney slashed the bridge authority’s capital budget by 65 per cent.
The findings will infuriate motorists, who face chaos following the decision to close the link between Edinburgh and Fife until the New Year.
Transport bosses last night insisted the part of the bridge that has fractured was never judged to ‘be at risk of failure’ in previous inspections.
But following our revelations, Scottish Lib Dem leader Willie Rennie said last night: ‘We need to fully understand what impact the cuts to capital spending had on the operation of the bridge.
‘Once the temporary arrangements are working effectively we need a proper investigation into the funding, inspection regime and maintenance programme for this vital crossing.’
In 2004, the first full inspection of the
‘We need a proper
investigation’
Forth Road Bridge found broken steel wires and corrosion in the cables that support its 13,800-ton weight, eventually leading to the decision to build a new crossing.
But the existing problem is not related to the cables, as it was announced on Friday there was a ¾in (20mm) crack in a load-bearing beam called a ‘truss end link member’ in the north-east tower.
The truss is the horizontal stiffening system below the main deck, which is affected by long queues of heavy vehicles. There is a ‘truss end link’ system at each tower.
In November 2006, a report by consultants for Transport Scotland assessing the need for a new crossing described ‘engineering difficulties’ and warned: ‘The stiffening truss is currently theoretically understrength and will require some major strengthening soon.’ In a list of ‘maintenance activity’, it included the ‘truss end linkages’ in the 2008-09 time period.
A few months later, the SNP came to power with a manifesto pledge to scrap tolls on the bridge, removing £12million a year that had gone on maintenance.
By February 2009, the truss end link project had been put back to 2010-11 as a separate trial was under way to dry out the cables. A contract was tendered in 2010, then cancelled.
In September 2011, Mr Swinney pushed through a 65 per cent cut in the Forth Estuary Transport Authority (FETA) capital budget.
Projects were ‘deferred’ as a direct result and documents from August 2013 reveal that the £434,000 truss end links project had already been quietly put back to 2012-13 and would be delayed for a third time until 2013-14.
In February 2014, then-bridgemaster Barry Colford said: ‘A repair option involving strengthening existing welds and adding stiffeners to the tower steelwork has been developed and a trial is being carried out on [one] tower leg.’
A year later, shortly before FETA was abolished, Mr Colford revealed a fourth
delay, saying: ‘Due to issues with the quality of the existing tower steelwork, the difficulties of access and the existence of red lead paint, coupled with the loss of key management staff, the focus is now on completing the trial on one tower leg before the end of May 2015.’
Last night, a Transport Scotland spokesman said: ‘Following assessment of this trial, [infrastructure support service provider] Amey is proceeding with design and strengthening works at the other three tower legs, which are to a different part of the truss end linkage system to that which failed last week.’
Transport Minister Derek Mackay insisted the fault was not linked to the fall in finance following the scrapping of bridge tolls or other cuts, adding: ‘This structural fault, on our best advice, is down to the age of the structure, the volume and weight of traffic. This fault has appeared in the last few weeks and is not related to any of the other strengthening work that was being undertaken.’
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