Urgent repairs set to cause long traffic delays on bridge

The announcement was made after engineers carrying out structural checks found cracks in nuts at both ends of one of the 944 bolts that hold the vertical hanger ropes to the bridge’s main suspension cables.

Motorists have been warned to expect long delays next weekend when essential repair work is carried out and the bridge will be reduced to carrying single lane traffic.

The discovery comes just days after engineers said they were “increasingly confident” that damage caused by corrosion to cables holding the bridge had successfully been slowed down by using a dry air system.

Yesterday, chief engineer Barry Colford confirmed new cracks had been found on nuts at both ends of one of the 944 bolts which hold the vertical hanger ropes to the bridge’s main suspension cables. The new damage has meant urgent action had to be taken.

Mr Colford said: “We’ve now found cracked nuts at both ends of one of the bolts, which is why we’re bringing forward their replacement.”

Motorists have been warned to expect severe delays on next Saturday and Sunday, when engineers will be working to replace the damaged bolts and the bridge will be restricted to single-lane traffic.

Mr Colford said: “Unfortunately these traffic restrictions are necessary for safety as we will be lifting an access cradle and other equipment on to the main cable above the carriageway.

“We know from experience that significant queues are likely to build up after 9am. We’re sorry for any inconvenience this causes. Our advice is to take an alternative route, delay your journey or use public transport if you need to travel at these times.”

In 2008 nine nuts had to be replaced when they developed cracks and it was suggested that a design fault had caused them to corrode quicker than they should have done.

Since then, engineers have carried out regular checks on all 1,888 nuts on the bridge. This is the first time cracks have been found at both ends of a single bolt.

Neil Greig, director of policy and Research for the Institute of Advanced Motorists, said the delays faced by motorists could be a sign of things to come.

He added: “The main reason we are getting a new Forth road bridge is that the one we have has problems. In some ways, this isn’t a surprise, but it is always worrying when a huge structure like this one develops problems.”