OT Forth Road Bridge

MartinM [email hidden] opined the following...

Quoted message said:

I heard on the radio this am that they are now looking to add a second
bridge (to augment the exisiting one which carries 24m vehicles pa when it
was designed for 4) but for buses/taxis/? trams (and presumably bikes) only.
Seems like seledgehammer to crack a nut, could they not just install a
bus/tram lane on the exisiting one? Forgive me for being naive, I have only
ever walked over it, but there seems to be a perfectly good train service
over the other bridge, and a cyclepath over the road bridge.

Since there are two cycle paths over the road bridge with a combined
capacity of at least one car lane (Assuming 50% is given over to
pedestrians) it's not so much a matter of a sledgehammer as an atomic
bomb!

Jon

Jon Senior said:

MartinM [email hidden] opined the following...

Quoted message said:

I heard on the radio this am that they are now looking to add a second
bridge (to augment the exisiting one which carries 24m vehicles pa when it
was designed for 4) but for buses/taxis/? trams (and presumably bikes) only.
Seems like seledgehammer to crack a nut, could they not just install a
bus/tram lane on the exisiting one? Forgive me for being naive, I have only
ever walked over it, but there seems to be a perfectly good train service
over the other bridge, and a cyclepath over the road bridge.

Since there are two cycle paths over the road bridge with a combined
capacity of at least one car lane (Assuming 50% is given over to
pedestrians) it's not so much a matter of a sledgehammer as an atomic
bomb!

Think about it a little first. The carrying capacity of a bridge is
not governed by the area of the deck but by the weight it is designed
to carry. Adding another vehicle lane to an existing bridge is going
to be almost as expensive as building a new one.
--
Phil Cook looking north over the park to the "Westminster Gasworks"

Phil Cook [email hidden] opined the following...

Quoted message said:

Think about it a little first. The carrying capacity of a bridge is
not governed by the area of the deck but by the weight it is designed
to carry. Adding another vehicle lane to an existing bridge is going
to be almost as expensive as building a new one.

But the point is: is there a need for another lane at all? There's a
perfectly good rail bridge a few hundred metres from the road bridge
with a direct link into Edinburgh. It doesn't take an enormous cognitive
leap to see a way of reducing the traffic on the bridge. Why build
another bridge to move buses and taxis faster when they could reduce
traffic on the existing one? And why on earth build a lane for trams
when a train service already exists?

Sorry to seem naive here, but this looks like another not-too-well
joined up transport policy at work!

Jon

MartinM said:

I heard on the radio this am that they are now looking to add a second
bridge (to augment the exisiting one which carries 24m vehicles pa when it
was designed for 4) but for buses/taxis/? trams (and presumably bikes) only.

It's been talked about before, which leads to teh headline in one of
teh trade journals I read - 'second chance for third forth bridge'.

Anyway, I'd say general consensus is it won't actually happen, though
it will be talked about over and again.

regards, Ian SMith
--
|\ /| no .sig
|o o|
|/ \|

"Phil Cook" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Jon Senior said:

MartinM [email hidden] opined the following...

Quoted message said:

Think about it a little first. The carrying capacity of a bridge is
not governed by the area of the deck but by the weight it is designed
to carry. Adding another vehicle lane to an existing bridge is going
to be almost as expensive as building a new one.

and apprently 44T trucks are the real problem; just don't see the point of
building a bridge just to encourage less private car journeys when there is
already the potential to do that on the existing infrastucture

On Fri, 24 Sep 2004 20:06:43 +0100, "MartinM" <[email hidden]>

Quoted message said:

I heard on the radio this am that they are now looking to add a second
bridge (to augment the exisiting one which carries 24m vehicles pa when it
was designed for 4) but for buses/taxis/? trams (and presumably bikes) only.
Seems like seledgehammer to crack a nut, could they not just install a
bus/tram lane on the exisiting one? Forgive me for being naive, I have only
ever walked over it, but there seems to be a perfectly good train service
over the other bridge, and a cyclepath over the road bridge.

Read all about it here

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,1297510,00.html

Or, for the unconnected reader, below:

I get the feeling that, in the latter half of the last century, a
planner was perched in the Scottish Office intent on bridging every
estuary and cove around the coast of Scotland.
Growing up in Sutherland, I remember the journey south becoming ever
shorter. First there was the low sweep of tarmac across the Cromarty
Firth, then the high wire act of the Kessock Bridge.

With those complete, the planner seemed to move into the wilderness.
There was the Kylesku Bridge, opened by the Queen (who didn't use it,
but instead motored up the sea loch in the royal yacht). Then a span
across the Dornoch Firth, robbing several villages of tourists.
Finally, the controversial Skye Bridge shifted the westernmost point
of the mainland from Ardnamurchan to Neist.

Having run out of unbridged gaps, the planner began to panic. Ten
years ago, he (I assume, he) decided to start building second bridges
across already covered waters, starting with a £500,000 plan for a new
road bridge across the Firth of Forth. He was scuppered only with the
dawn of the New Labour government in 1997.

That was then; now the plan is back.Yesterday the road bridge turned
40, and it is showing the signs of mid-life crisis.The engineers who
built it, spoke of a capacity of 11 million cars a year. This seemed
plenty when 4m cars travelled its length in its first year, but no
longer. Last year's figure was 24m. As a result, the bridge has spent
much of this year being renovated.

This plan for a second crossing has been resurrected in a strategy
document from the Forth Estuary Transport Authority, a cheesily
acronymed body that runs the existing road bridge. This time it is
couched in broader terms. FETA foresees a structure that carries a
tram, has dedicated bus and car-share lanes, and even a new train
line. This would be a new, touchy-feely road bridge, and one which
would cost a mere £1 billion.

Much of the noise about the need for a second bridge has come from
the north bank. For Fife, the crossing is crucial, a route out which
businesses need in order to flourish.

It's easy to understand the Kingdom's nervousness given we are a
country with a tendency to always look south for the money. For the
businesses north of the Forth, the road bridge looks a very thin
umbilical indeed.

So to some extent, FETA is right. If the rift between the central belt
and the north is to be healed then strong links need to run across the
Forth/Clyde divide.Yet, cars are just an easy answer, and the wrong
one. We were reminded last month that global warming may be creeping
up on us, and not with the balmy weather we all used to joke about.
Rather roads are being washed away by landslips in flash-floods. If
ever there was a bad example to set, it would surely be building a new
road bridge.

The idea of adding a train line is also deeply worrying. There is
already a rail bridge spanning the gap. Offering any alternative to
the people who have to maintain the Forth Rail Bridge would be a
travesty, because they would immediately try to shrug off the expense
of maintaining this hugely important monument to our 19th century
engineers. The moment the rail bridge becomes no more than a museum
piece, will be the end of it.

Our whole attitude towards the Forth Estuary needs to change. Stand at
the top of Edinburgh's George Street, and you can look out at the
towns that line the other bank. I once tried to bribe a fisherman to
ferry me from Pittenweem to North Berwick, but the man thought I was
mad, which seemed a bit rich given he had bits of crab in his beard.
The two banks shouldn't be see each other in such opposition. Instead
the water should be considered more like that of Sydney Harbour, or
the bay around Manhattan.

There are plans being considered by Brian Souter, owner of Stagecoach,
to start operating ferries between Edinburgh and towns like
Burntisland, Kinghorn and Kirkcaldy. This seems a very good idea, and
one worth pushing. The benefits to both banks would be immense. It
would be truly wonderful to see commuter ferries plying their trade
across the water.

The train lines north also need to be improved. This is an old, dull
cry but at the moment the system seems odd, old-fashioned and
illogical. Often a trip to Perth is like a jaunt round the Fife
peninsula. Which is fine for those who live in Leuchars, but
irritating if speed is important.

It also makes for an easy decision if your choice of transport from
Perth to Edinburgh is a 45 minute drive or a 75 minute train journey
(at the very least). Go further than that and the times become
monstrous: three and a half hours from Inverness, eight hours to get
from Wick.

FETA says that a quarter of the cars crossing the bridge head to
points west, so that its plans are not just about commuters. But that
is just another reason for a new planner in the new Scottish Executive
to tackle the problem with a passion that matches that earlier
bridge-building fanatic.

If the rail network could be made to match the road system, then the
Forth's rail bridge would be secure, there would be no need for a
second bridge, the country would seem more whole, and Scotland would
be a healthier place.

Jon Senior jon_AT_restlesslemon_DOTco_DOT_uk said:

Phil Cook [email hidden] opined the following...

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Think about it a little first. The carrying capacity of a bridge is
not governed by the area of the deck but by the weight it is designed
to carry. Adding another vehicle lane to an existing bridge is going
to be almost as expensive as building a new one.

Quoted message said:

But the point is: is there a need for another lane at all? There's a
perfectly good rail bridge a few hundred metres from the road bridge
with a direct link into Edinburgh. It doesn't take an enormous cognitive
leap to see a way of reducing the traffic on the bridge. Why build
another bridge to move buses and taxis faster when they could reduce
traffic on the existing one? And why on earth build a lane for trams
when a train service already exists?

Quoted message said:

Sorry to seem naive here, but this looks like another not-too-well
joined up transport policy at work!

What is more, continued funding to keep the rail bridge in repair has
been a hard question for a long time. So far all proposals to scrap it
have been scrapped, fortunately. Well, not actually scrapped, all
they've intended to do is to stop painting it. An immediate profit!
Time will then deliver the awful problem to someone other poor sod a
few decades down the line. The problem is that not enough people use
it. This isn't helped by the fact that the train "companies" have cut
back on their use of it, thus making train journeys which might have
used it so long and tedious that folk abandoned the trains and drove
over the road bridge instead.

It's amazing how socialists don't seem to understand how the free
market works, or more important, under what circumstances it
doesn't. It works marvelously when nobody is big enough to influence
the market, and everyone who benefits pays. The trouble with rail is
that if half the folk on the road bridge left their cars at home and
trained across the rail bridge, the other half on the road bridge
would benefit enormously. Maybe they wouldn't even have to build
another road bridge. But they wouldn't have bought a rail ticket, so
the market is heavily biassed against the rail bridge.

Why didn't the Labour Govt immediately stop the insane expensive
bureaucratically controlled pseudo-markets which are not only ruining
the railways, but making it impossible to deliver a decent service at
any price? It's simply got worse and worse since they came into power.

You might almost imagine there weren't any left-wing economists with a
decent education left in the Labour party!

That's why we don't have a joined up transport policy: you can't have
one without a proper understanding of how markets work, and how they
don't, and you can't get that from right wing economists, who
concentrate on strategies of snatching the pot of gold quickly before
the dragon wakes up, instead of devising ways of living with the
dragon.

--
Chris Malcolm [email hidden] +44 (0)131 651 3445 DoD #205
IPAB, Informatics, JCMB, King's Buildings, Edinburgh, EH9 3JZ, UK
[http://www.dai.ed.ac.uk/homes/cam/]

Chris Malcolm said:

You might almost imagine there weren't any left-wing economists with a
decent education left in the Labour party!

It's hardly surprising, with so few left-wingers left in the Labour
Party. The current pseudo-market system in rail and health can hardly be
blamed on 'socialists'.

--
Keith Willoughby http://flat222.org/keith/
Well you can keep the punk rock
Ska rap beats and house
[censored] me I'm twee

On Sat, 25 Sep 2004 09:34:08 +0000 (UTC) someone who may be
[email hidden] (Chris Malcolm) wrote this:-

Quoted message said:

Well, not actually scrapped, all
they've intended to do is to stop painting it. An immediate profit!

Not quite.

As often happens with privatisations, the Young Turks decided that
they could do things far better than the Old Farts. Thus the former
sacked the "old railway" painters in favour of "experts" from the
"advanced" section of society called the oil industry. These
"experts" discovered that it was a far bigger job than they thought,
also common with privatisations. The first company was sacked, all
their scaffolding removed and then scaffolding for the new company
was erected. This might well have been the same scaffolding. At the
moment the second company are busy painting the Forth Bridge.

The theory behind the current painting is to properly prepare the
metalwork and then apply modern paint that will preserve the
structure far more effectively than slapping on paint. It is
actually a high cost option.

Quoted message said:

This isn't helped by the fact that the train "companies" have cut
back on their use of it,

Not quite. The Forth Bridge is now busier than it has ever been.
There is now a regular service to Aberdeen and Inverness, plus four
local trains an hour in each direction, frequent coal trains and
infrequent longer distance expresses. For the first time ever the
bridge has become a bottleneck.

--
David Hansen, Edinburgh | PGP email preferred-key number F566DA0E
I will always explain revoked keys, unless the UK government
prevents me by using the RIP Act 2000.

On 25/9/04 6:30 pm, in article [email hidden],

David Hansen said:

The theory behind the current painting is to properly prepare the
metalwork and then apply modern paint that will preserve the
structure far more effectively than slapping on paint. It is
actually a high cost option.

Actually a low cost option, rather than a cheap option.

IIRC what they are doing is to prepare the metal work to base metal and to
apply a modern epoxy based paint that should last about 10-20 years. The old
paint did not provide such a long lasting finish even though it was cheaper
(2 years?). I think the projected overall long term cost savings are
considerable, on the order of 20% and this only needs doing every 10-15
years instead of the continuous method used before.

Of course I could be wrong.. I read an article in one of my dad's
professional journals (he is into coatings and materials for nasty
environments).

...d

"David Martin" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

On 25/9/04 6:30 pm, in article [email hidden],

David Hansen said:

The theory behind the current painting is to properly prepare the
metalwork and then apply modern paint that will preserve the
structure far more effectively than slapping on paint. It is
actually a high cost option.

Actually a low cost option, rather than a cheap option.

IIRC what they are doing is to prepare the metal work to base metal and to
apply a modern epoxy based paint that should last about 10-20 years. The

old

Quoted message said:

paint did not provide such a long lasting finish even though it was

cheaper

Quoted message said:

(2 years?). I think the projected overall long term cost savings are
considerable, on the order of 20% and this only needs doing every 10-15
years instead of the continuous method used before.

I assume that with or without rails over it it still needs to be preserved;
(says he having spent the last two days gazing over the grade 1 listed
Paddington 4th span which is under threat of demolition)

In news:[email hidden],
David Hansen <[email hidden]> typed:

Quoted message said:

Not quite. The Forth Bridge is now busier than it has ever been.
There is now a regular service to Aberdeen and Inverness, plus four
local trains an hour in each direction, frequent coal trains and
infrequent longer distance expresses. For the first time ever the
bridge has become a bottleneck.

(OTer)

Is there any reason why it has a 30mph limit on it? (IIRC) As the most
famously overengineered structure in the world, surely it could take a bit
more.

A

"Ambrose Nankivell" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

In news:[email hidden],
David Hansen <[email hidden]> typed:

Quoted message said:

Not quite. The Forth Bridge is now busier than it has ever been.
There is now a regular service to Aberdeen and Inverness, plus four
local trains an hour in each direction, frequent coal trains and
infrequent longer distance expresses. For the first time ever the
bridge has become a bottleneck.

(OTer)

Is there any reason why it has a 30mph limit on it? (IIRC) As the most
famously overengineered structure in the world, surely it could take a bit
more.

probably more to do with the track and how it is joined to the deck

On Sat, 25 Sep 2004 22:29:38 +0100 someone who may be David Martin
<[email hidden]> wrote this:-

Quoted message said:

IIRC what they are doing is to prepare the metal work to base metal and to
apply a modern epoxy based paint that should last about 10-20 years. The old
paint did not provide such a long lasting finish even though it was cheaper
(2 years?). I think the projected overall long term cost savings are
considerable, on the order of 20% and this only needs doing every 10-15
years instead of the continuous method used before.

The current painting of the Forth Bridge is a high cost option, in
the short term. There is indeed a hope that it will save money in
the long term, time will tell whether this hope is realised.

--
David Hansen, Edinburgh | PGP email preferred-key number F566DA0E
I will always explain revoked keys, unless the UK government
prevents me by using the RIP Act 2000.

On Sun, 26 Sep 2004 01:15:49 +0100 someone who may be "Ambrose
Nankivell" <[email hidden]> wrote this:-

Quoted message said:

Is there any reason why it has a 30mph limit on it?

There is a 50mph speed limit on it for passenger workings in the
right direction. For freight trains (and all movements in the wrong
direction) the speed limit is IIRC 30mph. This has been the case
since the old Forth Bridge rails and components were replaced by
modern standard rails and components, at least a decade ago.

The bottleneck is a signalling one, which the so-called Strategic
Rail Authority refuse to do anything about. As a result capacity to
carry passengers either side of the Forth Bridge remains unused and
Fife Council is campaigning for another road bridge.

Quoted message said:

(IIRC) As the most
famously overengineered structure in the world, surely it could take a bit
more.

There are in fact weight restrictions on the Forth Bridge, applying
to 100 tonne wagons. This is one of the reasons the Stirling -
Dunfermline line is being re-opened.

--
David Hansen, Edinburgh | PGP email preferred-key number F566DA0E
I will always explain revoked keys, unless the UK government
prevents me by using the RIP Act 2000.

Jon Senior said:

But the point is: is there a need for another lane at all? There's a
perfectly good rail bridge a few hundred metres from the road bridge
with a direct link into Edinburgh. It doesn't take an enormous cognitive
leap to see a way of reducing the traffic on the bridge. Why build
another bridge to move buses and taxis faster when they could reduce
traffic on the existing one? And why on earth build a lane for trams
when a train service already exists?

But that would mean people would have to take a train. And with people
like Scotrail responsible for enticing them thus I can start to see
problems... ;-/

Actually a second bridge of various design and feature points seems to
have been on the cards for years now. As far as Edinburgh's concerned
it's pretty pointless as yet because the bridge is only one of the choke
points (I've spent far more time sat in traffic having crossed it already).

Roos said recently she'd heard there was going to be a fast passenger
ferry from Kirkcaldy, straight into Leith.

Quoted message said:

Sorry to seem naive here, but this looks like another not-too-well
joined up transport policy at work!

Well, there's a surprise! (not)

Pete.
--
Peter Clinch Medical Physics IT Officer
Tel 44 1382 660111 ext. 33637 Univ. of Dundee, Ninewells Hospital
Fax 44 1382 640177 Dundee DD1 9SY Scotland UK
net [email hidden] http://www.dundee.ac.uk/~pjclinch/

On Mon, 27 Sep 2004 09:21:13 +0100 someone who may be Peter Clinch
<[email hidden]> wrote this:-

Quoted message said:

Actually a second bridge of various design and feature points seems to
have been on the cards for years now.

They have been planning one for at least two decades. Party
politicians may change and may claim to have changed policy, but the
officials remain and continue with their policy.

Quoted message said:

Roos said recently she'd heard there was going to be a fast passenger
ferry from Kirkcaldy, straight into Leith.

So far it is just being talked about, fairly seriously but still
just talk.

--
David Hansen, Edinburgh | PGP email preferred-key number F566DA0E
I will always explain revoked keys, unless the UK government
prevents me by using the RIP Act 2000.