TAY ROAD BRIDGE

The 'Tay Road Bridge' is an important road bridge in Scotland. It crosses the Firth of Tay from Newport-on-Tay in Fife to Dundee.
It is around 1.4 miles long (2,250 m), making it one of the longest bridges in Europe, and slopes gradually downward towards Dundee. It carries the A92 road across the Firth and takes traffic directly into the centre of Dundee, just downstream of the Tay Rail Bridge.

Contents

Construction

Commemorative obelisk

Tolls

External links

References

Construction

As part of the modernisation projects of the 1950s, a road bridge across the Tay had been mooted for several years. In August 1958 a traffic census and test borings were taken to locate the most suitable crossing for the bridge.
The bridge was designed by William A. Fairhurst and construction began in March 1963 with the infilling of West Graving Dock, King William Dock and Earl Grey docks in Dundee. Construction required the demolition of Dundee's Royal Arch where Queen Victoria had entered the city on a royal visit.
The bridge consists of 42 spans with a navigation channel located closer to the Fife side. During the construction of the bridge, 140,000 tons of concrete, 4,600 tons of mild steel and 8,150 tons of structural steel was used. The bridge has a gradient of 1:81 running from 9.75 m above sea-level in Dundee to 38.1 m above sea-level in Fife.
The bridge took 3½ years to build at a cost of approximately £6 million. Following the installation of the final 65 ton girder on July 4 1966, the completed bridge was officially opened by the Queen Mother on August 18. A newsreel of this is available in the British Pathe web archive. For four days, many took advantage of the toll-free period to cross the bridge.
The crossing had previously been made by a ferry service from Newport to Craigie Pier. The final ferry service was made on the day of the opening of the road bridge.

Commemorative obelisk

A 50 foot (15 metre) tall obelisk stands at the Newport side, and a smaller one at the Dundee side, to commemorate Willie Logan, managing director of the company that constructed the bridge who was killed in a plane crash near Inverness, and five workers who died during construction.
Both of these obelisks are designed as the piers of the bridge, each representing the height of the piers at that end of the bridge.

Tolls

The bridge was originally a bidirectional toll road with the original 1966 toll for motorcycles, cars and goods vehicles of 1/-, 2/6 and 10/-, respectively. Heavy fines were imposed on drivers who broke down on the bridge if they had run out of petrol. On June 1 1991, one way tolls were introduced whereby only southbound traffic would be charged.
Since March 2006, the bridge is one of the two remaining toll bridges in Scotland, and the current (September 2006) tolling regime is:

Classification'	Toll
Motor Cycles with or without sidecar.	''exempt''
Cars, goods vehicles and tractors having a maximum weight not exceeding 3.5 tonnes.	80p
Vehicles being buses constructed or adapted to carry not more than 16 passengers.	80p
Vehicles being buses constructed or adapted to carry more than 16 passengers.	£1.40
Goods vehicles and tractors having a maximum weight exceeding 3.5 tonnes.	£2.00

The legislation enabling the levying of tolls has been renewed by Parliament (originally that of the UK but now the responsibility of the Scottish Executive) repeatedly, most recently on 1 March 2006, where the toll remained unchanged.^[1] However, on 31 May 2007, the Scottish Parliament voted to scrap tolls on both the Tay and Forth bridges.^[2]
The bridge currently employs a total of 46 people comprising a bridge manager, 5 administration staff, 25 toll staff and 16 maintenance staff^[3]. These employees are mainly housed in a small administration block to the eastern side of the Dundee end of the bridge.

External links

★ Tay Road Bridge traffic information

★

References

1. Bridge tolls shake-up announced BBC
2. MSPs vote to scrap bridge tolls BBC
3. Tay Road Bridge Home Tay Road Bridge