Salmond goes for cut-price bridge across Forth

Stewart Stevenson, the transport minister, also revealed that the new bridge would be paid for using Scottish Government resources, not the controversial Scottish Futures Trust funding scheme.

Scottish ministers have asked the Treasury to accelerate their transport funding to allow this to happen, but if they do not get what they want from London they have admitted the cost of the new bridge could put other transport plans in jeopardy.

The decision to retain the existing road bridge as a public-transport crossing and scale down plans for a new structure took opposition MSPs and transport experts by surprise when it was announced yesterday.

The new bridge will have only two lanes in each direction with a hard shoulder, rather than three. The approach roads will be dual carriageways instead of motorways. This, ministers say, will cut the cost from an expected 4 billion to between 1.7 billion and 2.3 billion.

But it is also likely to mean an explosion in public transport, as bus operators realise they will have the old bridge all to themselves – at least until ministers get round to adding trams or a light rail system, which is likely to take many years to sort out.

By cutting back on the size and scale of the new crossing, ministers are also likely to face the prospect of the new bridge operating at full capacity as soon as it opens in 2016.

Sources close to Alex Salmond, the First Minister, admitted last night that the new preferred option was something of a "credit crunch" decision.

An insider said: "Finances are tight now. It does reflect that. But it also reflects the new information that the old bridge is not deteriorating as fast as we had feared."

Ministers now believe that, by taking most heavy traffic off the existing bridge, they can extend its lifespan to the full 120 years that it was meant to last when it was built in the early 1960s.

They also claimed yesterday that they could guarantee the new bridge would be in place by 2016 and come in on budget, because it was being paid for using Scottish Government funds.

Mr Stevenson said: "This is a project of unprecedented recent scale and will be a massive part of our infrastructure programme.

"Our strategy is economically sound and a value-for-money solution."

Opposition politicians warned that the Scottish Government was taking a big gamble.

A Labour spokesman said: "This is like Alex Salmond going down to the bookies and putting 2 billion on one horse. This is based on an assessment of the old bridge, which we haven't had yet."

The new Forth crossing was one of 29 transport proposals outlined yesterday to take Scotland into the next two decades.

These included the dualling of the A9 from Perth to Inverness, major improvements to the Glasgow-Edinburgh rail line, a new railway station in the west of Edinburgh to connect passengers with trams and the airport, and upgrading of the A96 between Aberdeen and Inverness.

There had been speculation that the new Forth crossing would be built using the SNP government's flagship Scottish Futures Trust (SFT) funding mechanism. At the heart of the SFT is a not-for-profit model of funding public-sector building projects, spreading the payments over many years.

John Swinney, the finance secretary, admitted yesterday that the current state of the markets made this approach virtually inconceivable.

He said it would be impossible to know how much the Scottish Government would have to pay in the long run for such a large amount of money.

Instead, he decided to use Scottish Government funds, but he has written to the Chancellor asking him to bring forward transport funds from 2017, 2018 and 2019, allowing ministers to cover the major payments on the bridge, expected in 2013, 2014 and 2015.

He stressed, however, that the Scottish Government had the money to pay for the bridge if the Treasury refused to help.

The Scottish Government has about 3.5 billion for road projects every year and this could be used to finance the new bridge, but it would inevitably delay or halt other major projects for a couple of years.

"If we are unable to secure the Treasury's agreement, then we will simply have to make choices about our capital programme," Mr Swinney said. "Our highest-priority capital investment project must be the maintenance of a Forth crossing."

Despite the likely increase in public transport across the Forth, Green campaigners attacked the Scottish Government for increasing capacity.

The best option, they claimed, would have been simply to repair the existing structure.

The Green MSP Patrick Harvie said the government should be tackling carbon emissions.

He said the Forth crossing plan would have been out of date in the 1960s, and added: "Campaigners across Scotland have called on the government to put the brakes on runaway climate change, but instead ministers have just stepped on the gas."

Friends of the Earth Scotland said: "The government is still refusing to recognise that the economically and environmentally sensible approach to the Forth crossing is to repair the existing bridge, rather than investing in additional capacity."

The Labour MSP Des McNulty dismissed the entire SNP transport strategy, claiming that many projects were destined never to be delivered.

He called on the finance secretary to admit the "failure" of the Scottish Futures Trust. "In that context, this document is a cruel con," he said.

Alex Johnstone, MSP, the Scottish Conservatives' transport spokesman, said of the strategy: "It falls short of delivering true budgets and, above all, it fails to deliver an adequate timescale."

Alison McInnes, for the Liberal Democrats, said costs had been inflated in the first place.

The Road Haulage Association backed the bridge plans and road improvements, but added: "Further detail is required about when these projects will be taken forward before we can acclaim the review as a great help for the freight industry."