Dear Sirs
 
As the constituency MSP for West Edinburgh I am pleased to be able to respond to the consultation about a further crossing of the River Forth. This is a very important issue in my constituency.

The Exhibition

Given the state of the present Road Bridge I hope that Transport Scotland and the Scottish Government will genuinely listen to the views of the public on this matter and then move quickly to deliver a new crossing.

Due to ill health I was unable to attend the exhibition on the one day it was in Queensferry however I did visit the Exhibition in Uphall. As you may be aware my office has already raised my concerns that the exhibition was only in South Queensferry for a single day, compared to six days in Fife.  Given that your preferred location for a bridge would impact directly on the people of South Queensferry and its environs I am appalled that you felt this was adequate. There are perfectly adequate locations in South Queensferry including the Rosebery Hall; the High School and two primary schools that were not utilised.  I would be very interested to know how many people attended at the various locations.

The event was not  particularly well advertised by Transport Scotland. My office found out about it from constituents who had been contacted prior to myself and other elected members. As soon as I received information I then wrote to the hundreds of constituents who had contacted me about this in the past. Many informed us that they wouldn’t have known about it otherwise.

My general thoughts about the presentation of the exhibition are that it was very slick but ultimately biased to the position that Transport Scotland have favoured all along, namely a bridge at Route D.  Any Ferry resident  who came to the exhibition thinking they would get answers to the question of how this project would affect their lives would have been disappointed.

For example; I did not think the information was clearly or fairly presented:

The 3 tunnel options were presented as one which meant that the Benefits & Drawbacks of each option were rather unclear. There are clear differences in the options and they should have been viewed separately as a result. In the tunnel Benefits/Drawbacks section everything that was a drawback of one or more option was shown in the Drawback list. Hence it was unclear if any of the tunnel options   had a balanced for/against argument.
The connection of the traffic into the road system north of the bridge option has not been thought through, I asked and was told that only concepts had been considered. This has to be a critical element as it would appear it will need a major update to the road system to get 4 lanes of traffic + bus lane (each way) over the hill between Rosyth and Inverkeithing and hooked into the current road system. This is an obvious bottleneck which could take significant cost to resolve.  I can not see how a decision can be made without considering this fully.

The Case for a new Crossing

I believe the case for a further crossing has been well made by the Bridgemaster and others.  The impact of increased traffic and HGVs, particularly, are clearly having a major impact on the existing bridge infrastructure and leading to increased maintenance and closures. The corrosion of cables and the length of time it will take for us to find out whether de-humidification and other treatments have worked, means that we must take action.  Suggestions that the Road Bridge might be closed to HGVs by 2013 should be treated very seriously. This would have a major impact on the economies of Edinburgh, West Lothian and Fife particularly.

There remains also a need to invest in a wide range of options from Rail to more Park and Rides and so on.  But all of those will not solve the problem we have with the Bridge. The Scottish Executive and FETA – the Forth Estuary Transport Authority have done the work over the past year and it seems clear to me that a further crossing is required.

My Preference

I have made no secret of my support for the idea of a tunnel west of Queensferry.  I believe this is the option favoured by the majority of my constituents.  This is borne out by surveys undertaken by the very active Queensferry & District Community Council.  There are a number of reasons why I believe this would be the best option.  These include the visual impacts; environmental impacts; the multi modal qualities of the tunnel option and the impacts on local residents and businesses.

Key Issues

My major criticism of the exhibition and the Final Report is that neither mention the impacts on people and on communities. This is absolutely fundamental to me as a locally elected representative. Has there been any work done by Transport Scotland on exactly who will be affected or are you quite happy to accept that there will always be human casualties of this sort of process and it doesn’t really matter who or where they live.  This doesn’t appear to have been taken into account in working out Benefit Cost Ratios of the different options; despite the fact that “minimising impact on people, the natural and cultural heritage of the Forth area” is listed as a Study objective.  Could you please make it clear to me how many people and what communities would be affected, and how they would be affected, by the different options.

In fact, details about how the BCRs have been arrived at weren’t available.
I favour a tunnel at C rather than a further bridge because a bridge would be more visually intrusive and would impact negatively on what is a truly iconic, national view. To build another bridge, likely to be taller than the Road Bridge, would detract from the aesthetics of the present view.

It is clear from the reports that a Bridge at D has a greater impact on the environment than a tunnel. I note the comments on Page 17 of the Final report that “The bridge options do not perform as well as the tunnel options in Corridors C and D.“ The report details likely impacts on the St Margaret’s Marsh SSSI and “indirect disturbance to protected species within both the Forth Islands and the Firth of Forth Special Protected Areas “.  The Forth Islands and Firth of Forth SPAs represent a major if indirect constraint on a bridge at Option D.  These sites have the highest level of protection and there is a presumption against development unless there are no alternatives.   I take no comfort from the fact that the full impact won’t be known until an Environmental Impact Assessment has been undertaken.  The report also notes that the Bridge D option may have major to moderate impacts on biodiversity.

There is no detail of the impact of traffic, including construction traffic, on communities and on air quality.

Port Edgar Marina is an important local asset  which includes the Sailing School, local voluntary bodies and businesses. The Marina  would be badly affected by being sandwiched between two road bridges as  well as the impact construction of either a tunnel or bridge would have on their existing silting up problems.  The City of Edinburgh Council are about to consult on redevelopment plans which have a fair degree of local support and it’s hoped that the Marina will be improved. I am incredulous that Transport Scotland and the Scottish Government think we can make an informed judgement with no information about how these plans would impact.

The bridge option appears to have been favoured because of financial reasons. This has been made more likely because of the previous work done at the time of the “Setting Forth” project when exploratory work was done on Corridor D and a bridge was favoured.  No further on the ground exploration is being done on Option C so the risk factor will be higher. My understanding is that the only work that has been done on other options recently is desk top work involving existing BGS maps. Less risk means lower costs so, once again, the bridge at D is favoured.  The Final report says “The assessment identified fewer technical risks with the Bridge at D “ and that “ there is the possibility of the progress of the Tunnel Boring Machine being impeded by the presence of unknown obstructions.“ However, page 63 of the Final Report , line 7, looking at the tunnel option at Route C , admits there is “limited geotechnical information available.“ There is also conjecture about the presence of dolerite even though “ there are no specific outcrops in the river on this alignment to indicate the presence of dolerite”. It is not clear how much of this section of the report is conjecture and how much is based on fact.  We need more information about how the risk factors have been arrived at and whether or not the same level of exploration has been undertaken at all sites.

The different costs associated with this project over the past year should give no-one any cause for optimism. I was told privately by a senior official that I was talking nonsense a few months ago when I said that a suspension Bridge and road network would cost more than a £1Billion.   Now we have quotes of £ 1.5 Bn for a cable stay bridge and £1.7Bn for a suspension bridge.

I also favour a crossing at C because I feel there is a benefit in streaming traffic across the river at different points and feeding into the road network at different points rather than at one point which would be more likely to have resultant congestion.  In terms of the route across the river I believe there is a real benefit in building a further crossing west of Rosyth so that the traffic – more than 60,000 vehicles a day already can be streamed before they cross the Forth allowing the 50% of vehicles which don’t go into Edinburgh in any way to go westwards sooner and allowing a reduction in unnecessary journeys.  It is also clear that many of the study objectives make a  further crossing close to the existing crossing attractive in terms of integration.  However I believe there are many MSPs like me, who feel that streaming traffic on the north side of the river and giving Fife residents the option to come across into West Lothian is preferable.

From the outset of this discussion, the Scottish Executive and FETA have always talked in terms of the further crossing being a multi modal crossing.  In the past while accepting the worth of such an approach I have questioned whether or not this was a genuine position given that there were no plans to take trams or light rail to either bridgehead and given that heavy rail seemed to present problems, particularly in terms of bridge construction.  The desire for a multi modal solution has been driven by the desire to reduce the amount of road traffic using the new crossing and crossing the Forth generally. However, I believe it has also been an attempt to make a further crossing more palatable to the environmental lobby. So I am disappointed to see that the preferred option is a cable stay bridge which will only carry road vehicles. I believe this is short sighted. It seems we are at real risk of building a 20th century bridge rather than a 21st century one. I know also that many local residents in my constituency and indeed in Fife would make use of heavy rail if there was greater capacity available so I think this attitude represents an opportunity missed. Whether or not this new approach has been taken because of the SNP Government’s objections to trams or not, I believe it is short sighted to put all our transportation eggs in one basket called road. Particularly when the lack of clarity about the existing crossing’s future means we can’t be sure of the capacity of the river crossings going forward. I believe Scottish taxpayers will feel let down and angry if we are simply spending £2bn to stand still and to see no increase in capacity or improvement in modal shift.

The Future of the Existing Road Bridge

I remain concerned that there is little detail about the future use of the existing Road Bridge. I am concerned that this project and the exhibition has been entitled the “Forth Replacement Crossing” rather than a “further” crossing and that at page 69 of the Final report it states that at Stage 2 appraisal the objective was “to find the most suitable option for a Replacement Crossing”.  Can you please inform me who took the decision that what was required was a replacement, not an additional crossing.  This was not a decision taken by Parliament because Ministers were not referring to it as a “replacement”?

There would be significant costs in, and no over powering reason for, dismantling it. I fail to see how respondents can begin to make proper assessment of the options until the Scottish Government and Transport Scotland come clean on their intentions for the existing bridge. There are clearly cost implications if the FRB were to be retained however, I believe the costs of mothballing it would be greater and unjustified. However, leaving this possibility on the table allows Transport Scotland to put forward a Route D / Bridge solution as the most sensible.  I believe we require both crossings to cope with ongoing demand and the need for maintenance.

I trust these comments and the others you receive will be genuinely listened to and taken on board.  I’m afraid the impression I have from constituents is that this is a foregone conclusion and that the Scottish Government will go ahead with the bridge option at D with attendant impacts on the people, businesses, environment and quality of life of South Queensferry.

Yours sincerely

Margaret Smith

MSP Edinburgh West