Troubled Waters.

So just when you thought it was a certainty that there would be a new road bridge over the Forth ....

"THE NEW chief engineer of the Forth Road Bridge has given the clearest indication yet that the corrosion threatening the structure's safety can be halted and repairs carried out to keep it open for 100 years. In a meeting with a campaign group opposed to a new Forth road crossing, Barry Colford, who took over as bridgemaster in February, said he was highly confident that cable drying, now under way at a cost of £10.3 million, would halt the decline in the strength of the bridge. He told the ForthRight Alliance: "Although the main cable has lost about a tenth of its strength since construction, we now have a high degree of confidence that the deterioration can be arrested by dehumidification." Last year's campaign for a replacement Forth road crossing was based on claims that corrosion might force early closure of the bridge."

Buried in the article is an admission that we won't know until 2012 how successful the dehumidifcation process has actually been. By which point if no steps have been taken to build a new bridge it will already be too late to avoid massive disruption to traffic travelling along the east of Scotland. If we don't need a new bridge then so be it, but relying on people who oppose a new bridge under any circumstances to call the shots on that decision would be a major mistake.