Forth Road Bridge: Travel Restrictions To Ease

Vans will be allowed to use the A985 from Monday, with all vehicles able to use it at weekends.

There's to be an easing of travel restrictions on the Forth Road Bridge diversion route.

The dedicated Heavy Goods Vehicle/Buses only corridor on the A985 will now be open to all light goods vehicles, like vans, starting this Monday.

All restrictions will be lifted at weekends, so cars will also be allowed to use the road.

Restrictions to the A985 priority route will be lifted completely on 23rd December to coincide with the start of the holiday period.

At the moment, the route is open to all vehicles between 8.00 pm and 5.00 am only.

The Forth Road Bridge was closed on Thursday December 3rd after a fault was found in a steel truss.

The detailed plans to fix the problem have now been finalised - and it involves a plate welded repair to the damaged truss end link and jacking the link into position.

Chartered Engineer Mark Arndt, Amey's Account Director responsible for the bridge said:

“Our teams have been working 24/7 since the defect was identified a little over a week ago. Our design teams have finalised the detailed solution plan, the access platform is under construction and we’ve mobilised all the resources we need to begin the repair works.

“Progress of the repair work is vulnerable to weather conditions.  Wind speeds at times make it unsafe for our people to continue but by having our personnel on standby at the bridge and by monitoring live wind-speed data in our control room we’re able to get straight back out to work on the repairs in every available window and our programme remains on schedule for completion in the New Year.”

In addition to repairing the defect, Amey is taking preventative action on another seven similar locations on the bridge to prevent any issues from occuring and structural monitoring systems are also being installed at these locations.