YESTERDAY’S ANNOUNCEMENT on the new Forth Road Bridge has not pleased everyone, with environmentalists calling the new bridge a costly mistake for Scotland and campaigners urging the government to save the country £2 billion and repair the existing Forth Road Bridge itself.

Friends of the Earth said a new bridge across the Forth, which they deemed unnecessary when the existing bridge could and must be repaired, would risk sabotaging Scotland’s progress towards a sustainable economy.

The group said that the “staggering” £2.3 billion budgeted for the new bridge could be better spent on improved public transport and other green initiatives if it could be made available without excessive borrowing from future budgets.

Friends of the Earth argued that reducing traffic on the existing bridge would be the best way to make crossing the river a pleasant experience and that repairing the 45-year-old structure would cost a fraction of the price of the new crossing which would lead to additional climate changing emissions.

The environmental campaigners have now called on the Scottish Government to heed their own climate laws and invest in getting people to use bikes, buses or trains before taking the car.

Head of campaigns with Friends of the Earth Scotland Juliet Swann said, “Previous plans for a second Forth Road Bridge were thrown out in the mid 1990s on the grounds that it was unsustainable.

“It is astonishing that, 15 years later, and in the run-up to the critical Copenhagen climate change talks, that the largest infrastructure project in Scotland is a road bridge designed to accommodate ever-increasing levels of traffic growth.

“If Scotland is to both meet its climate targets and support a sustainable economy, the government should be investing in better public transport and helping people make the shift from the car to the bus, the train and the bike, not blowing billions on a new road bridge.

“Given that the bridge is reparable at a much lower cost and impact, it is both financially and environmentally irresponsible to pursue the construction of a new bridge.

Calls to repair the Forth Road Bridge were backed by the ForthRight Alliance, the campaign against the proposed second Forth Road Bridge.

The group, a coalition of groups opposed to the construction of a second road bridge, have called for Scottish Ministers to save Scottish taxpayers £2 billion by concentrating on repairing the existing Forth Road Bridge rather than pursuing what they claimed was an unaffordable, unsustainable and unpopular second road bridge.

ForthRight Alliance chairman Lawrence Marshall said, “Working to resolve the problems of the existing bridge should be the top priority of the Scottish Government rather than pursuing an unaffordable, unsustainable and unpopular second bridge.

“A second road bridge comes at the huge cost of £2300 million.

“It would be financially irresponsible for the government to commit to constructing a second bridge when the existing bridge can and should be repaired.

“Work is under way to repair the cables.

“Even were cable drying to fail, new cables would cost between £91 and £122 million.

“A new bridge is guaranteed to bring traffic disruption. New cables may not even be required and, if they were, the existing bridge would remain largely open for the vast majority of the time.”