Lawrence Marshall: The new Forth bridge crosses a line

It's often said that folk "cannot see the wood for the trees". The news that the so-called Forth Replacement Crossing Project has been awarded a "prestigious industry award" for the sustainability and environmental quality of its proposed work is a fine example.

, writes

In making this award, the Civil Engineering Environmental Quality Assessment and Award Scheme must surely have utilised sustainability criteria which were somewhat less than comprehensive.

The award represents navel-gazing myopia of the worst self-congratulatory kind. The whole project to build an additional road crossing of the Forth at Queensferry at a cost to the public purse of around 2.3 billion reeks of financial incontinency and environmental lunacy.

If the Institution of Civil Engineers ?wishes to promote sustainability, let it sponsor an urgent study into the efficacy of the cable-drying work on the current Forth Road Bridge – and which, on the first Severn Bridge, reduced humidity by half within 18 months.

Already, the Forth Estuary Transport Authority (FETA) has indicated that dehumidification of the west cable, begun in March 2008, is producing the "expected slow and steady fall in the relative humidity". However, FETA does not plan to re-inspect the cable until next year when, in September 2008, the Bridgemaster wrote that a "further inspection is … planned around 2011 … to determine if the corrosion has been halted or significantly reduced".

Fixing the problems of the current bridge should be the Scottish Government's top transport priority – not sending out news releases trumpeting an award with more holes in its reasoning than a lump of Feta cheese.

How a project which, in engineering terms, isn't needed and which will double road capacity across the Forth at Queensferry can be regarded as "sustainable" is beyond the ken of those who take a more holistic view of this venture and who can only see red where engineers apparently can see green.

l Lawrence Marshall is chairman of campaign group the ForthRight Alliance.