Meeting of the Parliament 15 March 2016
The Forth road bridge is one of the most important transport links in Scotland and it is crucial to Fife’s economy. More than 70,000 vehicles cross the bridge every single day, which means that there are about 24 million crossings a year.
Last December’s bridge closure had a huge impact on the communities that I represent in Dunfermline, Kincardine and west Fife. The closure impacted on commuters, who faced the choice of doubling their journey time by travelling by bus, squeezing on to a train, with little prospect of getting parked anywhere nearby, or driving the long way round via the Clackmannanshire bridge, again doubling—or often trebling—their journey time.
The closure impacted on businesses, which experienced significant losses. Some, such as the walled garden near Kincardine, were cut off entirely from their customers, and virtually all were affected detrimentally not just by the closure of the bridge, but by the restrictions on the A985. They paid the price in lost working hours, late deliveries and higher fuel bills.
The closure impacted on workers. Some contacted me to say that their hours had been cut or that they had been laid off entirely, and many more told me that they faced a huge increase in travel costs. Many shift workers were unable to get to their workplace at all due to no public transport being available during the night; others were forced to leave for work at ridiculous hours in the morning, with many hours added on to their daily commute, which bumped up childcare costs.
The closure impacted on residents of villages such as Culross. There was a traffic nightmare as roads became jam packed with vehicles using the village to bypass the A985. Children were left unable to cross the road to get to school due to the continuous flow of traffic. One of my constituents could not even leave his house due to large vans passing within inches of his front door—the historic village where he lives is simply not designed for such traffic. The constant changing of permitted routes with no notice caused mayhem on local roads and added to the frustration for local communities.
I think that all of that highlights the need to develop contingency plans for the future that involve local communities and use their local knowledge and communication networks to ensure that the traffic plans that are put in place actually work and minimise disruption for local residents.