Hauliers ‘counting cost’ of Forth Bridge closure

Major trade associations have welcomed the Department for Transport’s (DfT) decision to temporarily relax drivers’ hours regulations for vehicles which would normally use the Forth Road Bridge, since it was announced that it would close until the New Year.

The 51-year-old Forth Road Bridge usually carries around 70,000 vehicles a day, but has been shut for emergency repairs, following the discovery of a crack in the steelwork which specialist engineers have said renders it unsafe for use.

Transport Scotland, the agency responsible for overseeing transport infrastructure north of the border, has said it hopes that the bridge will be repaired and reopened by 4 January.

But the disruption has led to drivers having to perform 50-mile detours via the Kincardine Bridge, some 15 miles upstream. Getting to the second bridge by road adds around 40 miles to a journey, preventing some drivers from completing their trips in a single shift – and the Freight Transport Association (FTA) is reporting that, with tailbacks of around 11 miles, its members have incurred thousands of pounds worth of additional costs as a result.

“Our operating costs have increased by £11,000 per week – this is massive for us,” it reported one member as saying. “The cost includes compensation for extra mileage to self-employed drivers and employing additional staff to cover left over stops from existing drivers who have less time to deliver due to driving back and forth.”

Another said: “If you consider that in recent days we have run between 20 and 40 vehicles a day, in rough terms it is costing us between two and four thousand pounds per day.”

Scotland’s first minister Nicola Sturgeon has confirmed that the government intends to ensure the bridge is reopened to all vehicles in the New Year, despite some fears that HGVs may still have to use an alternative route.

Meanwhile, the Scottish parliament’s infrastructure and capital investment committee yesterday (16 December) announced that it had agreed to hold an inquiry into the bridge closure, and in particular the structural defect that caused it.

“This is not just a problem for our Scottish members; it is having an impact throughout the UK, and the priority must be to get the bridge open to all traffic as soon as possible,” said FTA policy director Karen Dee.

“The Forth Road Bridge is vital to our national roads infrastructure and using alternatives is adding time and cost to our members who operate on very tight margins. Their contracts have all been agreed on the assumption of using the bridge so a 50-mile detour is significant.”

However, the association said the relaxation of drivers’ hours rules, which allows HGV and PSV drivers who would have used the bridge an additional two hours driving time per day until 6 January, would help operators make vital Christmas deliveries in Scotland.

Chris MacRae, FTA’s Scottish policy chief, said: “The bridge closure makes it impossible in some cases for deliveries to be made on time so this relaxation will help Scottish industry, exporters and consumers in the busy run-up to Christmas.

“No time of year would be good for this to happen, but Christmas is particularly challenging and it’s bound to have a knock-on effect of delays and additional costs in the rest of the UK. We need to get the bridge open to HGVs as soon as possible to ease the disruption –this shows just how critical it is to our national transport infrastructure.”

FTA had earlier gathered information from members to form part of a submission by Transport Scotland to DfT, requesting the hours relaxation – since drivers’ hours remains a policy area reserved to the UK government. The association also urged the postponement of any planned roadworks on alternative routes, in order to minimise disruption for HGVs.

Meanwhile, the Road Haulage Association (RHA) said the Scottish government “does not seem to fully appreciate the economic impact that the closure of the Forth Road Bridge will have on the haulage industry in Scotland.”

RHA chief executive Richard Burnett said: “The knock-on effects for hauliers are already beginning to bite,” adding that, while a new dedicated route for goods and passenger vehicles on the A985 was welcome, the additional cost to hauliers had been “immense”.

“The extra cost for a single HGV to replace what is in effect, a 2.5 mile journey with a detour that can amount to approximately a 60 mile round trip will add an extra £30 in fuel costs alone,” he said. “With an estimated 10,500 HGVs using the bridge each day, the additional operating costs for the industry will be well in excess of £600,000 per day.”

Burnett continued: “Already we have had reports from members who have had no alternative but to ask their customers for a rate rise. A request that has, unsurprisingly, been met with a great deal of resistance.

“In addition to the increase in operating costs, the overall efficiency of the haulage industry in Scotland is already being greatly reduced as a journey that would take 30 minutes can now take up to three hours if the route is congested.”

He added that the RHA would be pushing for compensation, and answers, from the Scottish government.

“Hauliers, already working to tight margins simply cannot absorb these extra costs… Why, despite regular routine inspections, were these defects not picked up before? And why did they become so serious so quickly?

“The major distribution centres based on the north, Fife side of the river are totally reliant on an efficient, swift transport system. The run-up to Christmas is the busiest time of year for these companies and the system, through no fault of its own, has broken down.”