As someone who grew up in Fife, I don’t need to be reminded of the Forth Road Bridge’s importance.
And like thousands of people across Scotland, I’ve spent part of this week trying to work my way around the closure.
My extended family usually gets together in the East Neuk before Christmas to exchange presents in order to save on postage. This year, we’re making alternative arrangements.
I know that’s just one visit out of thousands upon thousands which are being affected. And I know that for many firms and families alike, its closure isn’t just an inconvenience, it’s devastating.
For hauliers alone, the cost is thought to be in the region of £600,000 a day.
It can’t be fixed soon enough.
My thoughts are with the engineers who will be working through another weekend tomorrow to try to ensure the bridge is open by the New Year.
I think the response to the discovery of a crack in the superstructure last week has been extraordinary.
From engineering firms to the train operators trying to find more rolling stock, it looks like everyone is doing their bit. They deserve our thanks and praise.
That mustn’t, however, stop us from asking some serious questions about how this was allowed to happen in the first place.
That’s particularly the case because as we now know major repair work to the same part of the bridge here the crack appeared last week was cancelled in 2010.
As I said in the Scottish Parliament yesterday, I think it’s pretty clear what has happened.
Money was being spent on the new Queensferry Crossing, which is set to open in 2017. So it appears the decision was made to put off fundamental repairs to the old bridge until there was another bridge for people to use.
In other words, the authorities gambled that the bridge could be patched up until next year a gamble that has failed.
It’s easy to see why such a gamble might have been taken. Firstly because that fundamental work might have caused disruption for commuters so why not wait until they had another route to travel by?
And secondly because it meant spending money and at a time when budgets are tight, why not do that later?
The pity is that the SNP Government has simply refused to accept this in the last week. Nicola Sturgeon repeated yesterday that the 2010 repair project wasn’t for the part of the bridge which has now cracked. And she has asserted that budget constraints were “absolutely, unequivocally” not to blame for not carrying out repairs.
It is patent nonsense.
In 2010, there was a plan to replace bits of the bridge that were under stress and that job got cancelled. One of the bits set to be replaced is the one that’s now cracked.
On the radio on Tuesday morning, Transport Minister Derek MacKay confirmed that the 2010 repair work “would have seen the replacement of that area and much more.”
Furthermore, we now know that the budget for the Forth Road Bridge one set by John Swinney and Nicola Sturgeon was hacked from £10 million in 2011 to just £4.9m the year after. It has stayed at that reduced level ever since.
But it appears that the SNP Government is opting for that old political rule: never admit mistakes, never apologise.
We aren’t getting the answers we deserve. The SNP Government is passing the buck to the Forth Estuary Transport Authority. Yet FETA no longer exists. This is why I and other opposition party leaders are calling for a full inquiry into what happened so we can ensure it never happens again.
In the meantime, the priority just be to get the bridge back up and running.
Yesterday I asked Ms Sturgeon to reverse her budget cuts so that, over the next year, the old bridge has all the money necessary to ensure it remains open while we need it.
She gave me no such assurance but I hope the Scottish Government will support that next week in its annual budget.
I also asked whether she can guarantee that all traffic not just cars will be able to use the bridge when, in January, the Scottish Government expects it to re-open. The First Minister said she hoped this would be the case. But we will wait and see.
In the week since the bridge’s closure, we’ve witnessed the sight of a government which refuses to accept mistakes were made – and prefers instead to bluster its way through the facts to preserve its image.
And that isn’t a government in which I have a huge amount of confidence.