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Tay Road Bridge
The Tay Road Bridge, viewed with Dundee in the background.
Official name	Tay Road Bridge
Carries	Motor vehicles, cyclists and pedestrians 4 lanes of A92
Crosses	Tay River
Locale	Dundee
Maintained by	Tay Road Bridge Joint Board
Design	William A Fairhurst
Total length	2,250m
Opening date	August 18, 1966
Toll	80p cars £1.40 buses £2.00 trucks
Coordinates	56.452° N 2.948° W

The Tay Road Bridge is an important road bridge in Scotland. It crosses the Firth of Tay from Newport-on-Tay in Fife to Dundee.

It is around 1.4 miles long (2,250 m), making it one of the longest bridges in Europe, and slopes gradually downward towards Dundee. It carries the A92 road across the Firth and takes traffic directly into the centre of Dundee, lying downstream of the Tay Rail Bridge.

Contents 1 Construction 2 Commemorative obelisk 3 Tolls 4 External links 5 References

As part of the modernisation projects of the 1950s, a road bridge across the Tay had been mooted for several years, but little headway made. However, it was not until August 1958, when a traffic census and test borings were taken to locate the most suitable crossing for the bridge.

The bridge was designed by William A Fairhurst and construction began in March 1963 with the infilling of West Graving Dock, King William Dock and Earl Grey docks in Dundee. Construction also required the demolition of Dundee's Royal Arch where Queen Victoria entered the city on royal visit.

The bridge consists 42 spans with a navigation channel located closer to the Fife side. During the construction of the bridge, 140,000 tons of concrete, 4,600 tons of mild steel and 8,150 tons of structural steel was used. The bridge has a gradient of 1:81 running from 9.75 m above sea-level in Dundee to 38.1 m above sea-level in Fife.

The bridge itself took 3½ years to build at a cost of approximately £6 million. Following the installation of the final 65 ton girder on July 4, 1966, the completed bridge was officially opened by Queen Mother on August 18. A newsreel of this is available in the British Pathe web archive. For four days, many took advantage of the toll-free period to cross the bridge.

The crossing had previously been made by a ferry service from Newport to Craigie Pier. The final ferry service was made on the day of the opening of the road bridge.

A 50 foot (15 metre) tall obelisk stands at the Newport side, and a smaller at the Dundee side to commemorate Willie Logan, managing director of the company that constructed the bridge who was killed in a plane crash near Inverness, and five workers, who died during construction.

Both of these obelisks are designed as the piers of the bridge, each representing the height of the piers at that end of the bridge.

The bridge was originally a bidirectional toll road with the original 1966 toll for motorcycles, cars and goods vehicles of 1/-, 2/6 and 10/-, respectively. Heavy fines were imposed on drivers who broke down on the bridge if they had run out of petrol. On June 1, 1991, one way tolls were introduced whereby only southbound traffic would be charged.

Since March 2006, the bridge is one of the two remaining toll bridges in Scotland, and the current (September 2006) tolling regime is:

Classification	Toll
Motor Cycles with or without sidecar.	exempt
Cars, goods vehicles and tractors having a maximum weight not exceeding 3.5 tonnes.	80p
Vehicles being buses constructed or adapted to carry not more than 16 passengers.	80p
Vehicles being buses constructed or adapted to carry more than 16 passengers.	£1.40
Goods vehicles and tractors having a maximum weight exceeding 3.5 tonnes.	£2.00

The legislation enabling the levying of tolls has been renewed by Parliament (originally that of the UK but now the responsibility of the Scottish Executive) repeatedly, most recently on 1 March 2006, where the toll remained unchanged.^[1]

• Tay Road Bridge traffic information

1. ^ BBC (March 1 2006). Bridge tolls shake-up announced.