NT1179 : The Queensferry Crossing
taken 7 years ago, near to Forth Road Bridge, Edinburgh, Great Britain
A rather stilted name for the project to construct a second Forth Road Bridge, as the original [1964] one is wearing out, the Forth Replacement Crossing has now been replaced by the democratically chosen official name. The FRC Bill was approved by the Scottish Parliament in December 2010, and the Bill received Royal Assent in January 2011. Construction began in September 2011 and the bridge is expected to open in 2016, at an estimated cost of £790m. The constructors are Forth Crossing Bridge Constructors [FCBC], a consortium of four companies [Dragados, Hochtief, American Bridge International and Morrison Construction].
Update August 31 2017. Handed over to the Scottish Government on August 28 2017, with an evening light show - more or less finished, late but under budget; opened to traffic on 30 August for two days, then closed to allow around 50000 people to walk across at the weekend [normally, as a motorway, no pedestrians allowed]; to be officially opened by HM Queen Elizabeth II on 4 September 2017; and finally opened for general use on 7 September.
The Queensferry Crossing is the third bridge across the Firth of Forth at Queensferry, alongside the Forth Road Bridge completed in 1964 and the Forth Bridge (rail) completed in 1890. It is a three-tower cable-stayed road bridge, built alongside and to the west of the original Forth Road Bridge which opened in 1964. The new bridge carries the M90 motorway across the Firth with the northern landfall at St Margaret's Hope, between Rosyth Dockyard and North Queensferry and the southern landfall just west of Port Edgar in South Queensferry. Including the approaches, the overall length of the bridge is 2.7 kilometres (1.7 miles), making it the longest triple tower cable-stayed bridge in the world (Link Edinburgh Reporter); each of its three towers is 207 metres (679 feet) high, making it the UK's tallest bridge (Link BBC Scotland).
The original bridge had a planned theoretical capacity of up to 11 million vehicles per year, but this had risen steadily to 23 million vehicles in 2006. Additionally, an inspection programme undertaken between 2003 and 2005 found that the main suspension cables had suffered an estimated 8–10% loss of strength as a result of corrosion highlighting the need for a replacement or additional crossing. Construction of the new bridge began in 2011 and was due to be completed by 2016 but this was delayed twice and it wasn’t opened to traffic until 30 August 2017. The official opening was carried out on 4 September 2017 by Queen Elizabeth II, fifty-three years to the day after she opened the adjacent Forth Road Bridge. Since opening, the new bridge has been used to carry motor-cycles, cars and heavy goods vehicles, whilst public transport, cyclists and pedestrians continue to use the existing bridge.
The project was initially known as the Forth Replacement Crossing. The name Queensferry Crossing was chosen by a public vote in 2013.