LIFE was better when we were children. It was all sunny and optimistic. When we opened our copy of Look & Learn magazine, everything was positive and for the best in the best of all possible worlds. The wonders of the world were, well, wonderful. No one was bothered if they were brought in over-budget. There weren’t any political arguments because, most of the time throughout history, there wasn’t any pesky democracy.

Then we grow up and find that, today, it’s all gripes, groans, moans and political point-scoring. Even in the recent past – Victorian times and so forth – projects we thought universally admired as wonderful are found to have been surrounded by controversy at the time. And it is far, far worse now, where love and tolerance are officially proclaimed, but vitriol and hatred run amok.

Take the Queensferry Crossing, replacement for the Forth Road Bridge. The vehicle bridge over the Firth of Forth is a construction of stunning beauty, no more so than at night when illuminated. It came in under budget and was admired internationally. As such, it infuriated many Scots: the usual suspects in the weirdest wee country in the world.

But, before we get into the derision and self-loathing, let’s go back to the beginning. Why would anyone want to cross the Firth of Forth in the first place? Well, it seems religion had something to do with it. Not that God was thought to live in Kirkcaldy, but the story goes that, in the 11th century, pious Queen Margaret wanted to aid religious pilgrims desiring to visit holy places in Dunfermline and St Andrews.

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These schmucks didn’t have cars or First Bus, so it was a ferry across the water, giving its name to North Queensferry on the Fife side and South Queensferry on the Edinburgh side. Variants of this marine arrangement continued for 900 years (till 1964).

In 1890, competition had appeared in the form of the Forth Bridge for trains – subject of a separate Icons feature later – and, believing Fife was their oyster, folk started to think: why not build another bridge for cars tae, ken? And, lo, after six years in the making, and with a loss of seven lives during construction, the Forth Road Bridge was opened by Her Majesty, a Queen, in 1964.

The bridge spanned the sunny, optimistic spirit of that decade. There were no Scottish nationalists to trumpet it as a triumph of their own, and no unionists to be appalled that Scotland could create such a success story.

The total cost of the project, including road connections and realignments, was £19.5 million. At a total length of 1.56 miles, it boasted the longest suspension bridge span outside the United States. You can imagine the gushing Pathé News report of the time.

By the turn of this century, though, concerns were growing about structural wear and tear, with the bridge frequently carrying double its intended 30,000-per-day capacity. On December 1, 2010, heavy snow forced it to close for the first time. It was also frequently closed to high-sided vehicles during strong winds. And so the idea of a new bridge for road traffic was born, with the old one retained for public transport, emergency vehicles, certain agricultural vehicles, motorcycles up to 125cc, pedestrians and cyclists.

Work started on the Queensferry Crossing in 2011 and was completed in August 2017, eight months after its original deadline, delays having been caused by high winds and amounting to relatively little as massive construction projects go. Toll-free, such charges having been scrapped on the old bridge in 2008 (cue more moaning), the new £1.35 billion structure was officially opened by the same queen mentioned earlier (not Margaret, d.1093, the other one), 53 years to the day after she’d performed a similar duty on the first bridge.

The name “Queensferry Crossing” was chosen after a public poll, in which shortlisted suggestions also included Caledonia Bridge, Firth of Forth Crossing, Saltire Crossing and St Margaret’s Crossing. Bridgy McBridgeface didn’t make it. At any rate, most locals just call it “the new road bridge”.

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Stats: the cable-stayed structure’s three towers stand 207 metres (679 feet) high, making it the UK’s tallest bridge. Including approaches, its overall length is 2.7 kilometres (1.7 miles). Wind-shielding is built into the design. Two workers died during construction of the bridge, one from a heart attack.

Approaching the bridge from the Edinburgh side, the road bends, affording motorists and passengers an early side-on view from a distance of a fantastically elegant structure, the cables splaying from the slim towers like webs, giving an ethereal quality of diaphanous strength. Together, the three bridges over the Forth now form a fantastic triptych.

But a bridge for tens of thousands of vehicles a day has above all to be practical, even if beauty follows function. On February 11, 2020, the bridge was closed for the first time due to ice on the towers falling onto the carriageway and damaging vehicles. Even after new sensors were installed, the bridge had to close again on December 4, 2020, due to “falling ice and snow”.

For the “proud Scot but” brigade this falling ice was manna from heaven. While the complaints were legitimate and the safety concerns genuine, the carpers had been at it long before an icicle had formed. The bridge had been heralded by First Minister Nicola Sturgeon as “a symbol of a confident, forward-looking Scotland”, enough to make her enemies spit out teeth. Now these visceral opponents had the ammunition they desired for their claims of an “SNP vanity project”. One Tory MSP even referred to it as a “national embarrassment”.

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Meanwhile, plans to boost tourism in the area surrounding the national embarrassment, including a £10m visitor centre at the railway bridge, are still in the pipeline, though the pandemic put them on hold.

The hope is that, having no party political axe to grind and no dog in Scotland’s nasty constitutional fight, foreign visitors at least will look on the positive side, seeing only wonder, beauty and achievement.