IN 2014 I contributed to an article which demonstrated clearly that the Queensferry Crissing project at the time of writing had delays amounting to 15 months which had resulted in losing two summer periods due to delays in placing the caissons in the river. This activity that should have taken six weeks in actual fact ended up with the final caisson being completed some three years later. As of today the bridge is incomplete and the delays to completion at now two and a half years with no end in sight.

The story given out then that the bridge was delayed by bad weather was a fabrication; even an amateur geographer could have looked at the wind records on the old Forth Estuary Transport Authority website and determined that at 150m up the wind exceeded 28mph (the speed at which tower cranes automatically cut out) at least 50 per cent of the time, it would be considerably more at the 210m height of the crossing tower cranes.

Last Thursday the same bridge failed its most severe test, traffic to the Highland Show. The radio declared delays to the north of the bridge to be in excess of 25 minutes, I crossed at 7.30am and the traffic was running freely on the south side and yet the north half of the bridge had ground to a virtual standstill. This is not an unusual occurrence, your mobile phone will show vividly that at peak periods the bridge exhibits a phenomenon where the traffic runs free going south mid-span and in the evenings runs free going north after mid-span.

This clearly demonstrated that there is a fundamental problem with the bridge design. It is a fact that although it is a motorway its geometry is substandard to the design parameters recommended – the technical term is Derogations to Standards. The merges of traffic on the north side from Rosyth and Inverkeithing are too near the crossing and there is insufficient weaving lengths to merge the traffic safely, therefore it is forced to slow to a near stop. The south side is worse, you have the same problem with the traffic from Queensferry and Bo’ness but you have the added problem that because one of the lanes on the southern side is dedicated to Bo’ness and Queensferry, drivers use this lane to short-cut the bridge traffic by using the dedicated lane, going round the roundabout and down the bridge slip road, thus further frustrating the problem.

This same roundabout is a complete shambles. Parts of it are very wide two lanes, others are three lanes, some of the roads accessing it are controlled by traffic lights, others are not, the roundabout lights are not co-ordinated with the lights on Builyeon Road, with no more than half a dozen cars queuing before the queue backs up on the slip road.

The quality of the road surfaces both north and south of the bridge are appalling. From experience of constructing motorways they would definitely fail what is called “a rolling road test”, a measure of the ride comfort.

John R T Carson, South Queensferry.