Edinburgh's North Bridge: Millions could have been saved if bridge fully closed during refurbishment

Closing Edinburgh’s North Bridge could have saved millions – but warning of ‘significant impact’ on public transport

Millions could have been saved if North Bridge had been fully shut to traffic during its refurbishment, councillors have been told, after the latest cost estimate took the total to almost £86 million.

The council is planning to cut £12m from the city’s roads repair budget – and borrow the same sum – to meet the most recent £24m increase. Added to the previous total, this means the authority could end up spending £86m – nearly four times the original estimate – by the time the project is finished in 2025, five years behind schedule. The latest price hike led to a claim that it would have been cheaper to build a new bridge instead of undertaking the major repair, which originally had a price tag of £22m.

Since works commenced in 2018 one-way traffic has been maintained on the North Bridge, a key city centre link between the Capital’s Old and New Towns. But the council’s finance committee on Tuesday (February 7) heard that around £5m might have been saved if the bridge had been completely closed.

Around £5m could have been saved if North Bridge had been fully closed during refurbishment, but it would have had a 'significant impact' on public transport, councillors were told. Picture: Google streetview.

‘Quicker and cheaper to build a new bridge’

Tory councillor Graeme Bruce described the latest cost as “staggering” asked officials if they had known how much it was going to cost whether they would have gone down a different route?” Operational services director Gareth Barwell said: “We could have made this bridge, I would guess, five-ish million pounds cheaper if we’d fully closed it. The impact on the public transport network would have been significant but this bill could have been cheaper if we’d turned round earlier and said actually we’re going to close North Bridge fully."

After it emerged the cost of the refurbishment had risen again, with the roads budget set to take a hit as a result, Conservative group leader Iain Whyte said it would have been “quicker and cheaper” for the council to “build a new bridge instead”. But Mr Barwell said: “I can guarantee it wouldn’t have been cheaper to build a listed bridge across the north-east coast main line in a capital city, but I can understand people making that point.”

Mr Barwell said the full extent of the work required on the bridge was only discovered once contractors were able to access the full structure. A report said: “The condition of the bridge is now largely known and the project team is now confident that the revised budget will not be exceeded.”

But the proposal to take half the extra cost from the budget set aside for roads maintenance is controversial. Cllr Bruce said: “Surely the roads and pavements of the city are going to suffer with lack of funding. There are going to be more roads, like Lanark Road West, that are going to be full of potholes. That's quite a risk to the rest of the city, is it not?” Mr Barwell said: “It's not ideal, but clearly it's our job as officers to work up mitigations to minimise that risk. Ideally we would like more money to go into roads, but colleagues would say the same for schools and health and social care.”