Isramart : New crossing will not bridge gap on CO2 emission targets

Isramart news:
THE article “Trams will find it’s not easy being green” (News, 12 November) refers to the “largely discredited” assertion of the Scottish Government earlier this year that the Edinburgh trams will actually increase CO2 emissions whereas another Forth road bridge would result in a decrease!

You can bet your bottom dollar these figures are discredited!

What the emissions savings figure indicates is the supposed situation arising from a new bridge with “state-of-the-art” traffic management measures in place both on the bridge and its c
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onnecting road network. It assumes that the existing bridge will essentially only carry buses – and thus be over 99.25 per cent empty!

Such a scenario is unlikely to prevail for long – you can bet another bottom dollar that the existing bridge will soon be re-opened to at least cars.

As all studies have shown – and these assumed that tolls were still in place – that use by general traffic of both bridges would see both full up by 2031. Without tolls traffic would increase by a further 10 per cent.

As Edinburgh City Council has pointed out, the impact of an additional crossing is likely to include “large increases in cross-Forth traffic with the associated environmental and congestion impacts, regardless of whether a new crossing is ‘multi-modal’ or not’”.

So, aside from the sheer cost to the whole of Scotland of having to find £2 billion for another bridge, the increased availability of road space it will undoubtedly create will more likely lead to an increase in CO2 emissions, not a decrease – at a time when the same Scottish Government is committed to reducing CO2 emissions by 80 per cent by 2050.