Forth Road Bridge 5.35

The Forth Road Bridge is a suspension bridge in east central Scotland. The bridge, opened in 1964, spans the Firth of Forth, connecting Edinburgh, at Queensferry, to Fife, at North Queensferry. It replaced a centuries-old ferry service to carry vehicular traffic, cyclists and pedestrians across the Forth; railway crossings are made by the adjacent Forth Bridge, opened in 1890.The Scottish Parliament voted to scrap tolls on the bridge from February 2008. The bridge was nearing the end of its life in the 2010s, and a parallel replacement was built. On 5 September 2017 the bridge carried its final private cars, as the vast majority of traffic was transferred to the new Queensferry Crossing. Following a few weeks closure for repairs, the new role of the Forth Road Bridge will be as a public transport corridor, open only to buses, taxis, cyclists and pedestrians. At its peak, the Forth Road Bridge carried 65,000 vehicles per day (vpd), which is now expected to drop to only a few hundred following the opening of the Queensferry Crossing.HistoryThe first crossing at what is now the site of the bridge was established in the 11th century by Margaret, queen consort of King Malcolm III, who founded a ferry service to transport religious pilgrims from Edinburgh to Dunfermline Abbey and St Andrews. Its creation gave rise to the port towns of Queensferry and North Queensferry, which remain to this day; and the service remained in uninterrupted use as a passenger ferry for over eight hundred years. There were proposals as early as the 1740s for a road crossing at the site, although their viability was only considered following the construction of the Forth Bridge in 1890.